--no!" he laughed
good-naturedly. "But I'll tell you what I do think. If it wasn't
for the time that had gone by, I should believe that the second
witness had seen that crafty devil--" he lowered his voice. "But,
there, Dr. Gaunt declares most positively--so did two other medical
gentlemen--that the poor creatures had been dead hours when they
was found. Medical gentlemen are always very positive about their
evidence. They have to be--otherwise who'd believe 'em? If we'd
time I could tell you of a case in which--well, 'twas all because
of Dr. Gaunt that the murderer escaped. We all knew perfectly well
the man we caught did it, but he was able to prove an alibi as to
the time Dr. Gaunt said the poor soul was killed."

CHAPTER XX

It was not late even now, for the inquest had begun very punctually,
but Mrs. Bunting felt that no power on earth should force her to go
to Ealing. She felt quite tired out and as if she could think of
nothing.

Pacing along very slowly, as if she were an old, old woman, she
began listlessly turning her steps towards home. Somehow she felt
that it would do her more good to stay out in the air than take the
train. Also she would thus put off the moment--the moment to which
she looked forward with dread and dislike--when she would have to
invent a circumstantial story as to what she had said to the doctor,
and what the doctor had said to her.

Like most men and women of his class, Bunting took a great interest
in other people's ailments, the more interest that he was himself so
remarkably healthy. He would feel quite injured if Ellen didn't
tell him everything that had happened; everything, that is, that the
doctor had told her.

As she walked swiftly along, at every corner, or so it seemed to her,
and outside every public-house, stood eager boys selling the latest
edition of the afternoon papers to equally eager buyers. "Avenger
Inquest?" they shouted exultantly. "All the latest evidence!" At
one place, where there were a row of contents-bills pinned to the
pavement by stones, she stopped and looked down. "Opening of the
Avenger Inquest. What is he really like? Full description." On yet
another ran the ironic query: "Avenger Inquest. Do you know him?"

And as that facetious question stared up at her in huge print, Mrs.
Bunting turned sick--so sick and faint that she did what she had
never done before in her life--she pushed her way into a
public-house, and, putting two pennies down o