out over the fields towards the
sea. In the silence a noise of hobnailed haste rose on the still air. A
little distance down the road a boy appeared trotting towards them from
the direction of the hotel. In his hand was the orange envelope,
unmistakable afar off, of a telegram. Trent watched him with a carefully
indifferent eye as he met and passed the two others. Then he turned to
Marlowe. "Apropos of nothing in particular," he said, "were you at
Oxford?"

"Yes," said the young man. "Why do you ask?"

"I just wondered if I was right in my guess. It's one of the things you
can very often tell about a man, isn't it?"

"I suppose so," Marlowe admitted. "Well, each of us is marked in one way
or another, perhaps. I should have said you were an artist, if I hadn't
known it."

"Why? Does my hair want cutting?"

"Oh, no! It's only that you look at things and people as I've seen
artists do, with an eye that moves steadily from detail to
detail--rather looking them over than looking at them."

The boy came up panting. "Telegram for you, sir," he said to Trent.
"Just come, sir."

Trent tore open the envelop with an apology, and his eyes lighted up so
visibly as he read the slip that Marlowe's tired face softened in a
smile.

"It must be good news," he murmured half to himself.

Trent turned on him a glance in which nothing could be read. "Not
exactly news," he said. "It only tells me that another little guess of
mine was a good one."

CHAPTER VII

THE INQUEST

The coroner, who fully realized that for that one day of his life as a
provincial solicitor he was living in the gaze of the world, had
resolved to be worthy of the fleeting eminence. He was a large man of
jovial temper, with a strong interest in the dramatic aspects of his
work, and the news of Manderson's mysterious death within his
jurisdiction had made him the happiest coroner in England. A respectable
capacity for marshaling facts was fortified in him by a copiousness of
impressive language that made juries as clay in his hands and sometimes
disguised a doubtful interpretation of the rules of evidence.

The court was held in a long unfurnished room lately built onto the
hotel, and intended to serve as a ball-room or concert-hall. A regiment
of reporters was entrenched in the front seats, and those who were to be
called on to give evidence occupied chairs to one side of the table
behind which the coroner sat, while the jury, in double row, with