"I don't know that you can say that!" exclaimed the coroner, sharply. "The door was certainly locked by some one on Mr. Thornton, alive or dead; a key was used, it is plain, but you do not know that Mr. Thornton was dead at the time; you have no right to say that." "Perhaps not," said the clerk, humbly; "but it occurred to me, sir, that if Mr. Thornton had been alive when he was locked in, he would have tried to get out. When he found he could not get out by the door, would he not have broken one of the windows? Or maybe he would not have had more to do than lift a window and cry for help to some one without." The coroner agreed that there was something in what the clerk had said, but he did not pursue this branch of inquiry further. "You said," remarked the coroner, "that your firm supplied Mr. Silwood with two keys?" "Yes." "He never told you that he had lost one of the keys?" "I am positive he never did. If he had lost one, he would have sent to us for another, surely; and then I must have heard of it, for it is my duty to keep the record of the keys. We have a regular registry." "On the other hand, he might lose a key and say nothing about it; is that not so?" "Certainly, sir." Inspector Gale wondered not a little at the unusual line the coroner was taking in his questions. The clerk was now dismissed, and the Lincoln's Inn porter summoned. The porter corroborated in the main the evidence of the locksmith, the only new point he made being to state that he had been sent for by Mr. Francis Eversleigh to open Silwood's door. He was aware that this particular door had a special lock, and he had informed Mr. Eversleigh of the fact. Then Francis Eversleigh was called, and as he was plainly very ill, he was given a chair. The coroner, who knew him perfectly, invited him to make a statement, and in a weak, halting, hesitating manner he did so. When it was finished he was asked a few questions. "You were aware that Mr. Thornton intended coming to London?" "He wrote to us to that effect, but he specified no date on which we might look for him." "You did not know of his arrival in London--until when?" "Until my son, Gilbert, who had been making inquiries, told me of Mr. Thornton's coming to the Law Courts Hotel, and of the subsequent disappearance. Thereafter my firm offered a reward for any information which might lead us to know what had become of him." "Your son Gilbert had been making inquiries--why?" Francis Eversleigh, stumbling at every second or third word, gave an account of the circumstances which had resulted in the discovery that Morris Thornton had come to London, and had thereafter disappeared. "I was naturally very anxious," said Eversleigh. "Mr. Thornton was an old and dear friend, and his only child, a daughter, had lived with us for some years." "Was Mr. Silwood also a friend of the deceased?" "Almost as much as I was." "There was no ill feeling between them?" "I am quite sure there was not."