ning glance he shook his
head.

"No more evidence," whispered Tansley to Brent, as Wellesley, dismissed,
stepped down from the witness-box. "Whew! this is a queer business, and
our non-responsive medical friend may come to rue his obstinacy. I
wonder what old Seagrave will make of it? He'll have to sum it all up
now."

The Coroner was already turning to the jury. He began with his notes of
the first day's proceedings and spent some time over them, but
eventually he told his listeners that all that had transpired in the
opening stages of the inquiry faded into comparative insignificance
when viewed in the light of the evidence they had heard that morning. He
analysed that evidence with the acumen of the cute old lawyer that
everybody knew him to be, and at last got to what the sharper intellects
amongst his hearers felt, with him, to be the crux of the situation--was
there jealousy of an appreciable nature between Wallingford and
Wellesley in respect of Mrs. Saumarez? If there was--and he brushed
aside, rather cavalierly, Wellesley's denial that it existed at the time
of Wallingford's death, estimating lightly that denial in face of the
fact that the cause was still there, and that Wellesley had admitted
that it had existed, at one time--then the evidence as they had it
clearly showed that between 7.30 and 7.49 on the evening of the late
Mayor's death, Wellesley had ready and easy means of access to the
Mayor's Parlour. Something might have occurred which had revivified the
old jealousy--there might have been a sudden scene, a quarrel, high
words: it was a pity, a thousand pities, that Dr. Wellesley refused to
give the name of the person who, according to his story, was with him
during the nineteen minutes' interval which----

"Going dead against him!" whispered Tansley to Brent. "The old chap's
taken Meeking's job out of his hands. Good thing this is a coroner's
court--if a judge said as much as Seagrave's saying to an assize jury,
Gad! Wellesley would hang! Look at these jurymen! They're half
dead-certain that Wellesley's guilty already!"

"Well?" muttered Brent. "I'm not so far off that stage myself. Why
didn't he speak out, and be done with it. There's been more in that
love affair than I guessed at, Tansley--that's where it is! The woman's
anxious enough anyway--look at her!"

Mrs. Saumarez had come back into court. She was pale enough and eager
enough--and it seemed to Brent that she was almost holding her br