r vindow and let out der gas and all
mine evidence esgaped."

It is said that this interesting personage once instructed his jury
to find that "the diseased came to his death from an ulster on the
stomach."

These anecdotes are, perhaps, what judges would call obiter dicta, yet
the coroner's court has more than once been utilized as a field in the
actual preparation of a criminal case. When Roland B. Molineux was first
suspected of having caused the death of Mrs. Adams by sending the famous
poisoned package of patent medicine to Harry Cornish through the
mails, the assistant district attorney summoned him as a witness to the
coroner's court and attempted to get from him in this way a statement
which Molineux would otherwise have refused to make.

When all the first hullabaloo is over and the accused is under arrest
and safely locked up, it is usually found that the police have merely
run down the obvious witnesses and made a prima facie case. All the
finer work remains to be done either by the district attorney himself
or by the detective bureau working under his immediate direction or
in harmony with him. Little order has been observed in the securing of
evidence. Every one is a fish who runs into the net of the police, and
all is grist that comes to their mill. The district attorney sends
for the officers who have worked upon the case and for the captain
or inspector who has directed their efforts, takes all the papers and
tabulates all their information. His practiced eye shows him at once
that a large part is valueless, much is contradictory, and all needs
careful elaboration. A winnowing process occurs then and there; and
the officers probably receive a "special detail" from headquarters and
thereafter take their orders from the prosecutor himself. The detective
bureau is called in and arrangements made for the running down of
particular clues. Then he will take off his coat, clear his desk, and
get down to work.

Of course, his first step is to get all the information he can as to the
actual facts surrounding the crime itself. He immediately subpoenas all
the witnesses, whether previously interrogated by the police or not,
who know anything about the matter, and subjects them to a rigorous
cross-examination. Then he sends for the police themselves and
cross-examines them. If it appears that any witnesses have disappeared
he instructs his detectives how and where to look for them. Often this
becomes in the end