There was a strange scene at the inquest, which led to its postponement sine die. The body was identified, as many people will remember, and the fact reaffirmed, for all that it is worth, that a first-rate actor may be a tenth-rate man. This man had led the double, the quadruple life--a brutal, worthless creature, whose crowning grace had been his ending it voluntarily. He was married and had children. Fortunately for them he had played, and he died, under a nom-de-théâtre. But the odd thing at the inquest was the conflict of evidence as to his latest victim. Even local witnesses, when questioned as to her local existence, faltered and contradicted themselves. They fancied that they had seen some one with him, on this day or the other, but, when confronted with the oath, they would not swear. It would have been comical if not so tragical. It was the great London philanthropist--by then made known and suitably reverenced--who caused the final sensation in the Coroner’s Court. Gilead had risen to account for his presence on the scene; he had described how, in the interests of his Agency, he had traced a very vilely-used young woman to the neighbourhood, with the purpose of redeeming her if possible from the shame, and saving her from the misery to which she appeared committed. And there he had hesitated and stopped. It had been unnecessary and quite useless to quote the supernatural raison d’être of his mission; but how was _he_ going to deal with the illusion, if illusion it were, which had lured him to a pursuit otherwise unjustified? His companion on the occasion had already wavered, like the others, in his evidence: there might have been someone, he had ventured vacantly--he was not sure--the sun in his eyes, and so forth. And then even he, Gilead, had found himself unaccountably wondering if the apparition might not have been after all but a bugbear of the suicide’s own haunted conscience, hypnotically suggested to others. He answered a remark from the coroner, abstractedly looking down:-- “I believe that the young woman in question joined the deceased on the date specified--my information justifies the assumption--” and then he had glanced up, given a very palpable start, and continued mechanically, like one repeating a lesson: “I believe that he met her by appointment, that he took her to the boat, and that during the next two days she was often seen with him, _in the flesh_, upon the water. I believe that during the night of the third day he murdered her, and sunk her body in the deep pool under the houseboat, and that it lies there now. That is my opinion, sir--I cannot explain why--and I give it to you to act upon as you think fit.” Exitus acta probat. Here was the sensation, and with every incitement, on the initiative of such a witness, to prosecute it to the end.