inquest ended just as it
began--with the affair of Florey's murder as great a mystery as ever.
At the end of the fatiguing afternoon we were face to face with the
baffling fact that only four men had proven satisfactory alibis--Lemuel
Marten, Van Hope, Nealman and myself--and that any one of the dozen or
more men and women in that great, rambling house might have done the
deed.

CHAPTER XIII

Two telegrams had come for Mr. Nealman during the inquest; but the negro
messenger who had brought them had been too frightened by the august
session in the living-room to disturb him. It came about that Nealman
didn't get them until he and Van Hope left the room together.

The yellow envelopes were lying on a little table in the hall, and
Nealman started, perceptibly, at the sight of them. Except for that
nervous reflex through his body I wouldn't have given the messages a
second thought. Nealman picked them up, and still carrying on a
fragmentary conversation with his friend, tore out the messages.

He did not merely tear off the edges. In his eagerness his clawing
fingers ripped the envelopes wide open, endangering the messages
themselves within. He opened one of them, and his eye leaped over the
script.

He took one curious, short breath, then opened the second message, more
carefully now. Then he crowded both of them into his outer coat pocket.

At that point his conversation with Van Hope took a curious trend. He
still seemed to be trying to talk in his usual casual voice; yet a
preoccupation so deep, so engrossing was upon him that his friend's
words must have seemed to reach him from another sphere. It was a brave
effort; but his disjointed sentences, his blurred perceptions, told the
truth only too plainly.

Nealman had received disastrous news. His lips were smiling, but his
eyes were filled with some alien light. What that light was neither Van
Hope nor I could tell. It might have been frenzy. Quite likely it was
fear.

"Bad news, old man?" Van Hope blurted out at last, impulsively. They
were old friends--he was risking the charge of ill-bred curiosity to
offer sympathy to the other.

"Not very good, old man. I'll see you later about it. If you'll excuse
me I'll go to my room--and answer 'em."

He turned up the stairs--Van Hope walked out onto the verandas. I waited
for Edith, and in a moment we were walking under the magnolias,
listening to the twilight boomings of a bittern on the lagoon.

"And w