ated its contents to
him, while Halsey took them down in a note-book.

"I wish you had told me that before," he said, as he put the memorandum
carefully away. We found nothing at all in the house, and I expected
little from any examination of the porch and grounds. But as we opened
the outer door something fell into the entry with a clatter. It was a
cue from the billiard-room.

Halsey picked it up with an exclamation.

"That's careless enough," he said. "Some of the servants have been
amusing themselves."

I was far from convinced. Not one of the servants would go into that
wing at night unless driven by dire necessity. And a billiard cue! As
a weapon of either offense or defense it was an absurdity, unless one
accepted Liddy's hypothesis of a ghost, and even then, as Halsey
pointed out, a billiard-playing ghost would be a very modern evolution
of an ancient institution.

That afternoon we, Gertrude, Halsey and I, attended the coroner's
inquest in town. Doctor Stewart had been summoned also, it transpiring
that in that early Sunday morning, when Gertrude and I had gone to our
rooms, he had been called to view the body. We went, the four of us,
in the machine, preferring the execrable roads to the matinee train,
with half of Casanova staring at us. And on the way we decided to say
nothing of Louise and her interview with her stepbrother the night he
died. The girl was in trouble enough as it was.

CHAPTER XVII

A HINT OF SCANDAL

In giving the gist of what happened at the inquest, I have only one
excuse--to recall to the reader the events of the night of Arnold
Armstrong's murder. Many things had occurred which were not brought
out at the inquest and some things were told there that were new to me.
Altogether, it was a gloomy affair, and the six men in the corner, who
constituted the coroner's jury, were evidently the merest puppets in
the hands of that all-powerful gentleman, the coroner.

Gertrude and I sat well back, with our veils down. There were a number
of people I knew: Barbara Fitzhugh, in extravagant mourning--she always
went into black on the slightest provocation, because it was
becoming--and Mr. Jarvis, the man who had come over from the Greenwood
Club the night of the murder. Mr. Harton was there, too, looking
impatient as the inquest dragged, but alive to every particle of
evidence. From a corner Mr. Jamieson was watching the proceedings
intently.

Doctor Stewart was called