ishmen he loathed a moral puzzle.
Whilst he liked and trusted Luke, he hated the mystery which now met
him at every turn, just as much as he hated the so-called problem
plays which alien critics try to foist on an unwilling Anglo-Saxon
public.

He would have loved to hear Luke's voice saying quite frankly:

"Of course I did not kill my cousin. I give you my word, colonel, that
I am incapable of such a thing."

That was the only grievance which the older man of the world had
against the younger one. The want of frankness worried him. Luke was
innocent of course; but, d--n it, why didn't he say so?

And how came that accursed stick behind the railings of the park?

CHAPTER XXIV

A HERD OF CACKLING GEESE

When at ten o'clock the next morning Louisa Harris entered the
Victoria coroner's court accompanied by her father, the coroner and
jury were just returning from the mortuary at the back of the building
whither they had gone, in order to look upon the dead.

Already the small room was crowded to its utmost holding capacity.
Louisa and Colonel Harris had some difficulty in making their way
through the groups of idlers who filled every corner of the gangway.

The air was hot and heavy with the smell of the dust of ages which had
gathered in the nooks and crannies of this dull and drabby room. It
mingled with irritating unpleasantness with the scent of opoponax or
heliotrope that emanated from lace handkerchiefs, and with the pungent
odours of smelling salts ostentatiously held to delicate noses.

Louisa, matter-of-fact, commonplace Louisa looked round at these
unaccustomed surroundings with the same air of semi-indifferent
interest with which she would have viewed a second-rate local music
hall, had she unaccountably drifted into one through curiosity or
desire.

She saw a dull, drabby paper on the wall, and dull, drabby hangings to
the single window, which was set very high, close to the ceiling; the
latter once whitewashed was now covered with uneven coatings of grime.

In the centre of the room, a long table littered at one end with
papers tied up in bundles of varying bulk, with pieces of pink tape,
also a blotting pad, pen, ink, and paper--more paper--the one white
note in the uniform harmony of drabby brown: and in among this litter
that encumbered the table a long piece of green baize covering a
narrow formless something, which Louisa supposed would be revealed in
due course.

On each side of