e deceased entered
this room until the moment he placed the box in the safe which he
rented, the box was never out of his hands," he replied.

Then there was silence. At last the high official turned to the
chairman.

"Very well," he said. "We've made the enquiry. Rathbury, take the box
away with you and lock it up at the Yard."

So Spargo went out with Rathbury and the box; and saw excellent, if
mystifying, material for the article which had already become the daily
feature of his paper.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

MR. AYLMORE IS QUESTIONED

It seemed to Spargo as he sat listening to the proceedings at the
adjourned inquest next day that the whole story of what was now
world-famous as the Middle Temple Murder Case was being reiterated
before him for the thousandth time. There was not a detail of the story
with which he had not become familiar to fulness. The first proceeding
before the coroner had been of a merely formal nature; these were
thorough and exhaustive; the representative of the Crown and twelve
good men and true of the City of London were there to hear and to find
out and to arrive at a conclusion as to how the man known as John
Marbury came by his death. And although he knew all about it, Spargo
found himself tabulating the evidence in a professional manner, and
noting how each successive witness contributed, as it were, a chapter
to the story. The story itself ran quite easily, naturally,
consecutively--you could make it in sections. And Spargo, sitting
merely to listen, made them:

1. The Temple porter and Constable Driscoll proved the finding of the
body.

2. The police surgeon testified as to the cause of death--the man had
been struck down from behind by a blow, a terrible blow--from some
heavy instrument, and had died immediately.

3. The police and the mortuary officials proved that when the body was
examined nothing was found in the clothing but the now famous scrap of
grey paper.

4. Rathbury proved that by means of the dead man's new fashionable
cloth cap, bought at Fiskie's well-known shop in the West-End, he
traced Marbury to the Anglo-Orient Hotel in the Waterloo District.

5. Mr. and Mrs. Walters gave evidence of the arrival of Marbury at the
Anglo-Orient Hotel, and of his doings while he was in and about there.

6. The purser of the ss. _Wambarino_ proved that Marbury sailed from
Melbourne to Southampton on that ship, excited no remark, behaved
himself like any other well-regul