ly oppressive. Opoponax and
white heliotrope waxed faint to the nostrils. Through the badly
fitting window frame something of the outward fog had penetrated into
the room. It hung about in the air, round the gas that burned yellow
and dim through it, and obscured the far corners of the place,
throwing a veil over the twelve mutes in uniform overcoats with
threadbare velvet collars, over the eager and perspiring journalists
whose fountain pens had scraped the paper incessantly for so long.

Hot, tired, and oppressed humanity made its warm breath felt in the
close, ill-ventilated room. Smelling-salts would not dispel the
unpleasantly mingling odours of damp clothes and muddy boots which
rose from the plebeian crowd in the rear.

But nobody stirred; no one would have thought of leaving before the
last act of this interesting play. The chief actor was not on the
stage for the moment, but his presence was felt. It was magnetic in
its appeal to excitement. Every question put by the coroner, every
reply given by the witnesses, had, as it were, Luke de Mountford for
its aim: every word tended toward him, his undoing, the enmeshing of
his denials in the close web of circumstantial evidence.

Then a diversion occurred.

The man in the shabby clothes, who looked like a beetle, and who had
marshalled his companions into the court room early in the day, was
called upon by the usher to come forward. His strange, poorly-clad
figure detached itself from the groups immediately round him, his
long, loose limbs seeming to swing themselves forward.

His four companions--the three women and the other man--were seized
apparently with great agitation and whispered eagerly among
themselves. No one in the crowd could guess why these people had been
called. They seemed so completely out of the picture which had its
invisible frame in Grosvenor Square.

"Go on, Jim!" whispered one of the young women, "they can't do nothing
to ye."

And the beetle-like creature shambled forward, with arms gangling
beside him, a humble, apologetic look on his care-worn face. He might
have been any age from thirty to sixty; time and a perpetual struggle
for existence had wiped way all traces of actual age. The cheeks were
hollow, and eyes, mouth, and moustache had a droop which added to the
settled melancholy of the face.

He was obviously very nervous and looked across at his own friends,
who strove to encourage him by signs and whispers.

He nearly dro