the clothing of the deceased over the heart was scorched and
blackened with the powder of the cartridge. 'And from this fact,' added
Graham, with one of his shrewd glances, 'I gather that the murderer must
have been known to Jentham!'

'How is that, doctor?' asked one of the jury.

'Because he must have held him in talk while contemplating the crime,
sir. The murderer and his victim must almost have been breast to breast,
and while the attention of the latter was distracted in some way, the
assassin must have shot him at close quarters.'

'This is all theory, Dr Graham,' said the coroner, who was a rival
practitioner.

'It seems to me that the whole case rests on theory,' retorted Graham,
and shrugged his shoulders.

Before the evidence concerning the matter closed, Inspector Tinkler
explained how difficult it had been to collect even the few details
which the jury had heard. He stated also that although the strictest
search had been made in the vicinity of the crime, the weapon with which
it had been committed could not be found. As the shooting had been done
during a downfall of rain, the assassin's and his victim's footmarks
were visible in the soft clay of the roadway; also there were the marks
of horses' hoofs, so it was probable that the murderer had been mounted.
If this were so, neither gipsies nor harvesters could have killed the
wretched man, as neither the one lot nor the other possessed horses
and--'

'The gipsies have horses to draw their caravans!' interrupted a
sharp-looking juryman.

'To draw their caravans I admit,' said the undaunted Tinkler, 'but not
to ride on. Besides, I would remind you, Mr Jobson, as Mother Jael
declares, that none of her crowd left the camp on that night.'

'Oh, she'd declare anything,' muttered Jobson, who had no great opinion
of Tinkler's brains. 'Have the footmarks in the road been measured?'

'No, they haven't, Mr Jobson!'

'Then they should have, Mr Inspector; you can tell a lot from a
footmark, as I've heard. It's what the French call the Bertillon system
of identification, that's what it is.'

'I don't need to go to France to learn my business,' said Tinkler,
tartly, 'and if I did get the measurements of them footmarks, how am I
to know which is which--Jentham's or his murderer's? and how can I go
round the whole of Beorminster to see whose feet fit 'em? I ask you
that, Mr Jobson, sir.'

At this point, judging that the discussion had gone far enough, the
c