for perhaps
an hour. Her room was just over the front hall. About eleven she went to
bed, and the coroner's questions brought out the interesting fact that
seemingly she had been the last of the household--unless the murderer
himself was to be included thus--to have seen Florey alive. Her bed
stood just beside the front window, and just before she had retired she
had seen him walking out toward the lagoon.

The whole circle, tired of the dull testimony of the past hour, leaned
forward in rapt attention. "He was alone?" the coroner asked.

"Yes. I think I heard the door close behind him--I'm not sure. Then I
saw his form in the moonlight on the front lawn."

"You recognized him at once?"

"Not at once. I thought perhaps it was one of the guests. But in a
bright patch of moonlight I saw him plain."

"Where did he go?"

"He turned down the driveway toward the lagoon. I didn't see him again."

At the sound of the piercing scream she got up and put on a
dressing-gown, but she did not come down at once. She was afraid, she
said--she didn't know what to do. She had no knowledge as to the
activities and the positions of the other members of the household at
the time of the crime.

She had come to work as her uncle's secretary but a few weeks before;
and she verified perfectly Nealman's testimony in regard to the dead
servant. If he had had enemies in the household she had not been aware
of it, she knew of no chronic malady, and she did not think that he
carried any large amount of money on his person. The scream had seemed
to her to be one of unfathomable fear.

The housekeeper, Mrs. Gentry, was the last of the white people to be
called upon; and her testimony threw no new light upon the problem. She
was in bed and asleep, and the shouts of the men without had wakened
her.

The coroner called on the negroes in turn, and I was a little amazed
at the ease with which he wrung their testimony out of them. He knew
these dark people: no northern man could have hoped to have been so
successful. Sometimes he shouted at them as if in fury, sometimes he
wheedled or jested with them.

Not one of them but could prove an alibi. They were all in their own
quarters, they said, at the moment of the tragedy. Because this was the
South and they were black, they did not know Florey, a white man, very
well. And they had all been frightened nearly out of their wits by the
events of the night.

One by one he questioned them, but the