“I can assure you,” continued the man in the corner, “that you might have heard a pin drop in that crowded court whilst the old man spoke. That he was stating the truth no one doubted for a moment. The very fact that he was brought forward as a witness showed that his story had been proved, at any rate, to the satisfaction of the police. “The Collinses seem to have been very simple, good-natured people. It never struck any of them to interfere with William, who appeared, in their own words, to have ‘bettered himself.’ They concluded that he had obtained some sort of position in a rich family, and was now ashamed of his poor relations at Clapham. “Then one morning they read in the papers the story of the mysterious murder in the hansom cab, together with a description of the victim, who had not yet been identified. ‘William,’ they said with one accord. Michael Collins, one of the younger sons, went up to London to view the murdered man at the mortuary. There was no doubt whatever that it was William, and yet all the papers persisted in saying that the deceased was the heir to some grand peerage. “‘So I wrote to the police,’ concluded Charles Collins, ‘and my wife and children were all allowed to view the body, and we are all prepared to swear that it is that of my son, William Collins, who was no more heir to a peerage than your worship.’ “And mopping his forehead, with a large coloured handkerchief, the old man stepped down from the box. “Well, you may imagine what this bombshell was in the midst of that coroner’s court. Everyone looked at his neighbour wondering if this was real life, or some romantic play being acted on a stage. Amidst indescribable excitement, various other members of the Collins’ family corroborated the old man’s testimony, as did also one or two friends from Clapham. All those who had been allowed to view the body of the murdered man pronounced it without hesitation to be that of William Collins, who had disappeared from home three years ago. “You see, it was like a repetition of the Tichborne case, only with this strange difference: This claimant was dead, but all his papers were in perfect order, the certificate of marriage between Lucie Legrand and Arthur Le Cheminant at Martinique, as well as the birth and baptismal certificate of Philip Le Cheminant, their son. Yet there were all those simple, honest folk swearing that the deceased had been born in Clapham, and the mother, surely, could not have been mistaken. “That is where the difference with the other noteworthy case came in, for in this instance as far as the general public is concerned the actual identity of the murdered man will always remain a matter of doubt—Philip Le Cheminant or William Collins took that part of his secret, at any rate, with him to his grave.” Chapter V “But the murder?” I asked eagerly, for the man in the corner had paused, intent upon the manufacture of innumerable knots in a long piece of string.