added that a deal of things may happen in two weeks--and,
indeed, he would have had good reason for adding it, could he have looked
a few days ahead.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE ICE AX

The police put Carter in the dock before a full bench of magistrates next
morning, and the court was so crowded that it was all Mr. Lindsey and I
could do to force our way to the solicitors' table. Several minor cases
came on before Carter was brought up from the cells, and during this
hearing I had leisure to look round the court and see who was there. And
almost at once I saw Sir Gilbert Carstairs, who, though not yet a justice
of the peace--his commission to that honourable office arrived a few days
later, oddly enough,--had been given a seat on the bench, in company with
one or two other local dignitaries, one of whom, I observed with some
curiosity, was that Reverend Mr. Ridley who had given evidence at the
inquest on Phillips. All these folk, it was easy to see, were in a high
state of inquisitiveness about Crone's murder; and from certain whispers
that I overheard, I gathered that the chief cause of this interest lay in
a generally accepted opinion that it was, as Mr. Lindsey had declared to
me more than once, all of a piece with the crime of the previous week.
And it was very easy to observe that they were not so curious to see
Carter as to hear what might be alleged against him.

There appeared to be some general surprise when Mr. Lindsey quietly
announced that he was there on behalf of the prisoner. You would have
thought from the demeanour of the police that, in their opinion, there
was nothing for the bench to do but hear a bit of evidence and commit
Carter straight away to the Assizes to take his trial for wilful murder.
What evidence they did bring forward was, of course, plain and
straightforward enough. Crone had been found lying in a deep pool in the
River Till; but the medical testimony showed that he had met his fate by
a blow from some sharp instrument, the point of which had penetrated the
skull and the frontal part of the brain in such a fashion as to cause
instantaneous death. The man in the dock had been apprehended with
Crone's purse in his possession--therefore, said the police, he had
murdered and robbed Crone. As I say, Mr. Murray and all of them--as you
could see--were quite of the opinion that this was sufficient; and I am
pretty sure that the magistrates were of the same way of thinking. And
the police