The Coroner showed his satisfaction. "No duplicates," he repeated; "then you will have no difficulty in telling us where the keys to your father's front door were kept during the family's absence." Did the young man hesitate, or was it but imagination on my part--"They were usually in my possession." "Usually!" There was irony in the tone; evidently the Coroner was getting the better of his embarrassment, if he had felt any. "And where were they on the seventeenth of this month? Were they in your possession then?" "No, sir." The young man tried to look calm and at his ease, but the difficulty he felt in doing so was apparent. "On the morning of that day," he continued, "I passed them over to my brother." Ah! here was something tangible as well as important. I began to fear the police understood themselves only too well; and so did the whole crowd of persons there assembled. A groan in one direction was answered by a sigh in another, and it needed all the Coroner's authority to prevent an outbreak. Meanwhile Mr. Van Burnam stood erect and unwavering, though his eye showed the suffering which these demonstrations awakened. He did not turn in the direction of the room where we felt sure his family was gathered, but it was evident that his thoughts did, and that most painfully. The Coroner, on the contrary, showed little or no feeling; he had brought the investigation up to this critical point and felt fully competent to carry it farther. "May I ask," said he, "where the transference of these keys took place?" "I gave them to him in our office last Tuesday morning. He said he might want to go into the house before his father came home." "Did he say why he wanted to go into the house?" "No." "Was he in the habit of going into it alone and during the family's absence?" "No." "Had he any clothes there? or any articles belonging to himself or his wife which he would be likely to wish to carry away?" "No." "Yet he wanted to go in?" "He said so." "And you gave him the keys without question?" "Certainly, sir." "Was that not opposed to your usual principles--to your way of doing things, I should say?" "Perhaps; but principles, by which I suppose you mean my usual business methods, do not govern me in my relations with my brother. He asked me a favor, and I granted it. It would have to have been a much larger one for me to have asked an explanation from him before doing so." "Yet you are not on good terms with your brother; at least you have not had the name of being, for some time?" "We have had no quarrel." "Did he return the keys you lent him?" "No." "Have you seen them since?" "No." "Would you know them if they were shown you?" "I would know them if they unlocked our front door." "But you would not know them on sight?" "I don't think so."