hat came by the nine o'clock post. Deceased had left the house a little
after Mortlake, but had returned before him, and had gone straight to
his bedroom. She had not actually seen him come in, having been in the
kitchen, but she heard his latch-key, followed by his light step up the
stairs.

A Juryman: How do you know it was not somebody else? (Sensation, of
which the juryman tries to look unconscious.)

Witness: He called down to me over the banisters, and says in his
sweetish voice: "Be hextra sure to wake me at a quarter to seven, Mrs.
Drabdump, or else I shan't get to my tram meeting."

(Juryman collapses.)

Coroner: And did you wake him?

Mrs. Drabdump (breaking down): Oh, my lud, how can you ask?

Coroner: There, there, compose yourself. I mean did you try to wake him?

Mrs. Drabdump: I have taken in and done for lodgers this seventeen
years, my lud, and have always gave satisfaction; and Mr. Mortlake, he
wouldn't ha' recommended me otherwise, though I wish to Heaven the poor
gentleman had never----

Coroner: Yes, yes, of course. You tried to rouse him?

But it was some time before Mrs. Drabdump was sufficiently calm to
explain that though she had overslept herself, and though it would have
been all the same anyhow, she had come up to time. Bit by bit the tragic
story was forced from her lips--a tragedy that even her telling could
not make tawdry. She told with superfluous detail how--when Mr. Grodman
broke in the door--she saw her unhappy gentleman lodger lying on his
back in bed, stone dead, with a gaping red wound in his throat; how her
stronger-minded companion calmed her a little by spreading a
handkerchief over the distorted face; how they then looked vainly about
and under the bed for any instrument by which the deed could have been
done, the veteran detective carefully making a rapid inventory of the
contents of the room, and taking notes of the precise position and
condition of the body before anything was disturbed by the arrival of
gapers or bunglers; how she had pointed out to him that both the windows
were firmly bolted to keep out the cold night air; how, having noted
this down with a puzzled, pitying shake of the head, he had opened the
window to summon the police, and espied in the fog one Denzil Cantercot,
whom he called and told to run to the nearest police-station and ask
them to send on an inspector and a surgeon. How they both remained in
the room till the police arrived, Grodman po