suspicion of curl here and there, and
a glint of gold in the high lights, the stiff neck encased in its
immaculate collar, the perfectly tailored clothes, the hands, large
but well-formed and carefully tended, which lightly interlaced, hung
in marble-like stillness before him.

When a man happens to be out in mid-winter with a stout stick in his
hand, and he comes across a layer of ice on the top of a pool or a
trough of water, he always--or nearly always--is at once a prey to the
silly desire to break that layer of ice. The desire is irresistible,
and the point of the stick at once goes to work on the smooth surface,
chipping it if not actually succeeding in breaking it.

The same desire exists in a far stronger degree when the ice is a
moral one--one that covers the real nature of another man: the cold
impassiveness that hides the secret orchard to which no one but the
owner has access. Then there is an irresistible longing to break that
cold barrier, to look within, and to probe that hidden soul, if not
within its innermost depths, at any rate below the ice-bound surface;
to chip it, to mark it and break its invincible crust.

Some such feeling undoubtedly stirred at the back of the coroner's
mind. The hide-bound, red-tape-ridden official was more moved than he
would have cared to admit, by a sense of irritation at the placidity
of this witness, who was even now almost on his trial. Therefore he
had paused in his questionings, afraid lest that sense of irritation
should carry him beyond the proper limits of his own powers.

And now he resumed more quietly, with his voice less trenchant and his
own manner outwardly more indifferent.

"When," he asked, "did you last see the deceased?"

"In the lobby of the Veterans' Club," replied Luke, "the night before
last."

"You had called there to see him?"

"Yes."

"For what purpose?"

"To discuss certain family matters."

"You preferred to discuss these family matters at a club rather than
in your cousin's own home?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"For private reasons of my own."

"It would help this inquiry if you would state these private reasons."

"They have no bearing upon the present issue."

"You refuse to state them?" insisted the coroner.

"I do."

The coroner was silent for a moment: it almost seemed as if he meant
to press the point at first, then thought differently, for after that
brief while, he merely said:

"Very well."

Then he resumed:

"Now,