s you that the least said is soonest mended. We were
all packed pretty tightly in the big room of the inn when the coroner
opened his inquiry. And at the very onset of the proceedings he made a
remark which was expected by all of us that knew how these things are
done and are likely to go. We could not do much that day; there would
have to be an adjournment, after taking what he might call the surface
evidence. He understood, he remarked, with a significant glance at the
police officials and at one or two solicitors that were there, that there
was some extraordinary mystery at the back of this matter, and that a
good many things would have to be brought to light before the jury could
get even an idea as to who it was that had killed the man whose body had
been found, and as to the reason for his murder. And all they could do
that day, he went on, was to hear such evidence--not much--as had already
been collected, and then to adjourn.

Mr. Lindsey had said to me as we drove along to the inn that I should
find myself the principal witness, and that Gilverthwaite would come into
the matter more prominently than anybody fancied. And this, of course,
was soon made evident. What there was to tell of the dead man, up to that
time, was little. There was the medical evidence that he had been stabbed
to death by a blow from a very formidable knife or dagger, which had been
driven into his heart from behind. There was the evidence which Chisholm
and I had collected in Peebles and at Cornhill station, and at the inn
across the Coldstream Bridge. There was the telegram which had been sent
by Mr. Gavin Smeaton--whoever he might be--from Dundee. And that was
about all, and it came to this: that here was a man who, in registering
at a Peebles hotel, called himself John Phillips and wrote down that he
came from Glasgow, where, up to that moment, the police had failed to
trace anything relating to such a person; and this man had travelled to
Cornhill station from Peebles, been seen in an adjacent inn, had then
disappeared, and had been found, about two hours later, murdered in a
lonely place.

"And the question comes to this," observed the coroner, "what was this
man doing at that place, and who was he likely to meet there? We have
some evidence on that point, and," he added, with one shrewd glance at
the legal folk in front of him and another at the jurymen at his side,
"I think you'll find, gentlemen of the jury, that it's just enough