"Well, you can lie, and no mistake. Come now, Doctor, Simon says you 're safe, and I want to do a leetle plain talk with you." With this he laid ten eagles on the table; I put out my hand instinctively. "Let 'em alone," cried the man sharply. "They 're easy earned, and ten more like 'em." "For doing what?" said I. The man paused a moment, looked around him, eyed me furtively, and finally loosened his cravat with a hasty pull. "You 're the coroner," said he. "I! What do you mean?" "Yes, you,--the coroner, don't you understand?" and so saying he shoved the gold pieces towards me. "Very good," said I, "we will suppose I 'm the coroner." "And being the coroner," said he, "you get this note, which requests you to call at No. 9 Blank Street to examine the body of a young man which is supposed--only supposed, you see--to have--well, to have died under suspicious circumstances." "Go on," said I. "No," he returned, "not till I know how you like it. Stagers and another knows it; and it would n't be very safe for you to split, besides not making nothing out of it; but what I say is this. Do you like the business of coroner?" Now I did not like it, but two hundred in gold was life to me just then; so I said, "Let me hear the whole of it first." "That 's square enough," said the man; "my wife 's got"--correcting himself with a little shiver--"my wife had a brother that 's been cuttin' up rough, because, when I 'd been up too late, I handled her a leetle hard now and again. About three weeks ago, he threatened to fetch the police on me for one or two little things Stagers and I done together. Luckily, he fell sick with a typhoid just then; but he made such a thunderin' noise about opening safes, and what he done, and I done, and so on, that I did n't dare to have any one about him. When he began to mend, I gave him a little plain talk about this business of threatening to bring the police on us, and next day I caught him a saying something to my wife about it. The end of it was, he was took worse next morning, and--well he died yesterday. Now what does his sister do, but writes a note, and gives it to a boy in the alley to put in the post. Luckily, Stagers happened to be round; and after the boy got away a bit, Bill bribes him with a quarter to give him the note, which was n't no less than a request to the coroner to come to our house to-morrow and make an examination, as foul play was suspected." Here he paused. As for myself, I was cold all over. I was afraid to go on, and afraid to go back, besides which I did not doubt that there was a good deal of money in the case. "Of course," said I, "it's all nonsense; only I suppose you don't want the officers about, and a fuss, and that sort of thing." "Exactly," said my friend, "you 're the coroner; you take this note and come to my house. Says you, 'Mrs. File, are you the woman that wrote this note? because in that case I must examine the body.'"