eath as
the old Coroner, in his slow, carefully-measured accents and phrases,
went on piling up the damning conclusions that might be drawn against
Wellesley.

"You must not allow yourselves to forget, gentlemen," he was saying,
"that Dr. Wellesley's assertion that he was busy with a caller during
the fateful nineteen minutes is wholly uncorroborated. There are
several--four or five, I think--domestic servants in his establishment,
and there was also his assistant in the house, and there were patients
going in and out of the surgery, but no one has been brought forward to
prove that he was engaged with a visitor in his drawing-room. Now you
are only concerned with the evidence that has been put before you, and I
am bound to tell you that there is no evidence that Dr. Wellesley had
any caller----"

A woman's voice suddenly rang out, clear and sharp, from a point of the
audience immediately facing the Coroner.

"He had! I was the caller!"

In the excitement of the moment Tansley sprang to his feet, stared, sank
back again.

"Good God!" he exclaimed. "Mrs. Mallett! Who'd have thought it!"

Brent, too, got up and looked. He saw a handsome, determined-looking
woman standing amidst the closely-packed spectators. Mallett sat by her
side; he was evidently struck dumb with sudden amazement and was staring
open-mouthed at her; on the other side, two or three men and women,
evidently friends, were expostulating with the interrupter. But Mrs.
Mallett was oblivious of her husband's wonder and her friends'
entreaties; confronting the Coroner she spoke again.

"Mr. Seagrave, I am the person who called on Dr. Wellesley!" she said in
a loud, clear voice. "I was there all the time you're discussing, and if
you'll let me give evidence you shall have it on my oath. I am not going
to sit here and hear an innocent man traduced for lack of a word of
mine."

The Coroner, who looked none too well pleased at this interruption,
motioned Mrs. Mallett to come forward. He waved aside impatiently a
protest from Wellesley, who seemed to be begging this voluntary witness
to go back to her seat and say nothing, and, as Mrs. Mallett entered the
witness-box, turned to Meeking.

"Perhaps you'll be good enough to examine this witness," he said a
little irritably. "These irregular interruptions! But let her say what
she has to say."

Mrs. Mallett, in Brent's opinion, looked precisely the sort of lady to
have her say, and to have it right out. S