THE TWIN SCARVES To say that the village went mad with excitement when the bodies of the two victims, man and woman, were laid side by side in the great ballroom of Cheyne Court was to underestimate the case altogether. The villagers were literally crazed for the time being, and when news reached them, as such news will, that an inquest was to be held in that identical spot in a day or two, daft was no name for their condition at all. Cleek himself would have smiled at the rumours which were rife. So a revolver had been found beside the body of the murdered man who had so successfully impersonated the Honourable Miss Cheyne herself, had it? And--what? No, it couldn't be possible! Mrs. So-and-So had whispered that that identical revolver was the property of Sir Edgar himself! It was too much to believe; too horrible to think about! That little Master Edgar whom they had watched grow up from a toddling babe of two, prattling to his nurse on their walks through the village, and winning their hearts with the sweetness of his manner, that that child should have grown up and become a _murderer_. The thought was impossible. When the day of the inquest finally arrived, all Hampton turned out and put in an appearance at Cheyne Court. To tell the exact truth, Cleek's own mind was suffused for the time being with something that closely resembled doubt as regards Sir Edgar's innocence in the whole awful affair. Circumstantial evidence he had always regarded as a spider's web of coincidence to be brushed aside with the broom of a man's reason. But, somehow, this was different. He took his stand at the back of the great ballroom, and watched with keen eyes and saddened heart, while the coroner put forth the case in all its bald appallingness. In a sort of dream he heard that gentleman impart to the jury gathered there for the purposes of justice the colossal fact that they were met together to inquire primarily into the death of an unknown man, whose identification, up to the present, they had wholly failed to establish. Cleek shifted upon his feet and cast a quick glance over to the other side of the room, where Bobby Wynne and his sister Jennifer stood together, listening with unveiled interest. If they were in no way connected with it, their morbid curiosity in the affair sickened him. But if they _were_---- Watching the scene, as a mere spectator (he had particularly requested Mr. Narkom to make arrangements that he should not be called in any official capacity) Cleek felt that he could more clearly review the situation.