The sensation he looked for being slow in coming, another rush seemed expedient; but it fell flat as the first, and Mr. Cripps struggled on, desperately conscious that he had nothing else to say. "I rushed forward, sir; seein' which the miscreant absconded--absconded, no doubt with--with the proceeds; an' seein' Cap'en Kemp abscondin' after him, I turned an' be'eld the un'appy victim--the corpse now in custody, sir--a-layin' in the bar-parlour, 'elpless an'--an' decimated.... I--rushed forward." It was sad to see how little the coroner was impressed; there was even something in his face not unlike a smile; and Mr. Cripps was at the end of his resources. But if he could have seen the face of Musky Mag, in the little crowd behind him, he might have been consoled. She alone, of all who heard, had followed his rhetoric with an agony of attention, word by word: even as she had followed the earlier evidence. Now her strained face was the easier merely by contrast with itself when Mr. Cripps was in full cry; and a moment later it was tenser than ever. "Yes, yes, Mr. Cripps," the coroner said; "no doubt you were very active, but we don't seem to have increased the evidence. You say you saw the man who stabbed the deceased in the passage. Did you know him at all? Ever see him before?" Here, mayhap, was some chance of an effect after all. Mr. Cripps could scarce have distinguished the murderer from one of the posts in the alley; but he said, with all the significance he could give the words: "Well, sir, I won't go so far as to swear to 'is name, sir; no, sir, not to 'is _name_, certainly not." And therewith he made his sensation at last, bringing upon himself the twenty-four eyes of the jury all together. The coroner looked up sharply. "Oh," he said, "you know him by sight then? Does he belong to the neighbourhood?" Now it was not Mr. Cripps who had said he knew the murderer by sight, but the coroner. Far be it from him, thought the aspirant for fame, to contradict the coroner, and so baulk himself of the credit thus thrust upon him. So he answered with the same cautious significance and a succession of portentous nods. "Your judgment, sir, is correct; quite correct." "Come then, this is important. You would be able to recognise him again, of course?" There was no retreat--Mr. Cripps was in for it. It was an unforeseen consequence of the quibble, but since plunge he must he plunged neck and crop. "I'd know 'im anywhere," he said triumphantly. There was an odd sound in the crowd behind, and a fall. Captain Nat strode across, and the crowd wondered; for Musky Mag had fainted again. The landlord lifted her, and carried her to the stairs. When the door had closed behind them, and the coroner's officer had shouted the little crowd into silence, the inquest took a short course to its end.