To the reporters and to the members of the police who were present, crowding to suffocation the confined space of the coroner’s court, it became more and more evident that the inquest was not likely to throw any light upon the mystery. They heard, from the police witnesses, from the household servants, and from Joan Cowper, how the bodies had been found. Walter Brooklyn and others gave purely formal evidence of identification: the doctors for once told a plain story. George Brooklyn had been killed by a savage blow on the back of the head, dealt without doubt by a powerful man with the stone club of Hercules, which was produced in court with the bloodstains still upon it. Prinsep, too, had probably been killed by the blow on the back of his head, dealt with an unknown instrument. The knife thrust at the heart, which had missed its object, had been made subsequently, and would not by itself have caused sudden death. Inspector Blaikie’s evidence, indeed, promised to be more exciting; for he told of the finding of George Brooklyn’s handkerchief under Prinsep’s body, produced a knife, similar to that found in the body, which he had found in George Brooklyn’s office, showed the broken fragments of Prinsep’s cigar-holder found in the garden, and photographs of fingerprints found on the stone club and others taken from Prinsep’s hands. This was exciting enough; but it did more to mystify than to enlighten the public and the reporters. Still, it was excellent copy; and the reporters, and later the editors and sub-editors, made the most of it. Then, when the inquest seemed practically over, the coroner, a sharp little man who had attended strictly to business and said as little as possible throughout the proceedings, acted on the hint given him by the police, and ordered Walter Brooklyn to be recalled. Walter’s manner, when he gave his earlier evidence and was asked no more than a couple of formal questions, had shown plainly to the inspector, and also to Joan and Ellery, who were sitting together, that he was surprised at being let off so lightly. As the inquest went on, and nothing was said to draw him into the mystery, his expression, troubled and puzzled in the earlier stages, gradually cleared, and, up to the moment when he suddenly found himself recalled, he had been growing more and more sure that the suspicions of the police against him had been somehow dispelled. But now, in an instant, he realised that they had been deliberately keeping back everything that could seem to connect him with the case, not because they did not suspect him still, but because they had carefully set a trap into which they hoped that he would fall. For a moment, a scared look came into his face; but, when he stepped again into the witness stand, he wore his usual rather ill-humoured and supercilious expression. Immaculately dressed and groomed, he was a man who looked precisely what he was—an elderly, but still dissipated, man about town.