strike Professor Flick.
Some ran between, but they were not quick enough. Copping made one
clutch at his breast, and then, with a touch that seemed as light as if
he were merely throwing his hand into the air unpurposing, he made a
push at the breast of Professor Flick, and Professor Flick went down as
the bull goes down in the amphitheatre of Madrid or Seville when the
hand of the practised swordsman has touched him with the point in just
the place where he lived. Professor Flick, as he called himself, was
dead, and the whole plot was revealed and was over.

By a curious stroke of fate it was Ericson who caught the dying
Professor Flick as he fainted and died, and it was Hamilton who gripped
the murderer, the so-called Copping. Copping made no struggle; the
police took quiet charge of him--and of his weapon.

'Well, I think,' said Sir Rupert with a shudder, 'we have case enough
for a committal now.'

'We have occasion,' said the Coroner with functional gravity, 'for three
inquests; three?--no, pardon me, for four inquests, and for at least one
charge of deliberate murder.'

'Good Heaven, how coolly one takes it,' Sir Rupert murmured, 'when it
really does happen! Well, Mr. Coroner, Mr. Inspector, we must have a
warrant signed for Mr. Andrew J. Copping's detention--if he still
prefers to be called by that name.'

'Call me by any name you like,' Copping said sullenly, but pluckily. 'I
don't care what you call me or what you do to me, so long as I have had
the best of the traitor who deserted me in the fight. He'll not give any
Queen's evidence--that's all I care about--now. I'd have done the work
but for that coward; I'd have done the work if I had been alone!'

* * * * *

Yet a little, and the silence and quietude of a perfectly serene and
ordered household had returned to Seagate Hall. The Coroner's jury had
viewed the dead, and then had gone off to the best public-house in the
village to hold their inquest. The dead themselves had been laid in
seemly beds. The Sicilian and the victimised serving-man were not
allowed to be seen by anyone but the Coroner and his jury, and the
police officials, and of course the doctors. Almost any wound may be
seen by courageous and kindly eyes that is not on the head and face. But
a destruction to the head and face is a sight that the bravest and most
kindly eyes had better not look upon unless they are trained against
shock and horror by long pro