"Got an idea of it just before I left Jacob, and worked it all out, to the last detail, after I left," replied Burchill. "I tell you this for a certainty--when I've told you all I know, you'll know for an absolute fact, that the Herapath property is--yours!" "Well!" said Barthorpe. "What do you want me to do?" Burchill moved across to a desk and produced some papers. "I want you to sign certain documents," he said, "and then I'll tell you the whole story. If the story's no good, the documents are no good. How's that?" "That'll do!" answered Barthorpe. "Let's get to business." It was one o'clock in the morning when Barthorpe left Calengrove Mansions. But the eyes that had seen him enter saw him leave, and the shadow followed him through the sleeping town until he, too, sought his own place of slumber. CHAPTER XIII ADJOURNED Ever since Triffitt had made his lucky scoop in connection with the Herapath Mystery he had lived in a state of temporary glory, with strong hopes of making it a permanent one. Up to the morning of the event, which gave him a whole column of the _Argus_ (big type, extra leaded), Triffitt, as a junior reporter, had never accomplished anything notable. As he was fond of remarking, he never got a chance. Police-court cases--county-court cases--fires--coroners' inquests--street accidents--they were all exciting enough, no doubt, to the people actively concerned in them, but you never got more than twenty or thirty lines out of their details. However, the chance did come that morning, and Triffitt made the most of it, and the news editor (a highly exacting and particular person) blessed him moderately, and told him, moreover, that he could call the Herapath case his own. Thenceforth Triffitt ate, drank, smoked, and slept with the case; it was the only thing he ever thought of. But at half-past one on the afternoon of the third day after what one may call the actual start of the affair, Triffitt sat in a dark corner of a tea-shop in Kensington High Street, munching ham sandwiches, sipping coffee, and thinking lugubriously, if not despairingly. He had spent two and a half hours in the adjacent Coroner's Court, listening to all that was said in evidence about the death of Jacob Herapath, and he had heard absolutely nothing that was not quite well known to him when the Coroner took his seat, inspected his jurymen, and opened the inquiry. Two and a half hours, at the end of which the court adjourned for lunch--and the affair was just as mysterious as ever, and not a single witness had said a new thing, not a single fresh fact had been brought forward out of which a fellow could make good, rousing copy! "Rotten!" mumbled Triffitt into his cup. "Extra rotten! Somebody's keeping something back--that's about it!"