Such were the thoughts that kept dawdling through his mind, when he felt that he ought to be forming important decisions. What was he going to say when he was called in evidence? Was he going to give any hint as to his suspicions of foul play, or would it be better to leave the police to their own unaided intelligence? And if he did breathe his suspicions, was he bound to mention the golf-ball which he had found at the top of the embankment? Would they ask how he had employed his time between the moment when he found the body and the moment when the police arrived? He wished that he had discussed all this beforehand with Gordon—or would that have been conspiring to defeat the ends of justice? Anyhow, he wished the preliminary proceedings would hurry up. When he was actually called, he found that he was not asked for his opinion on any theoretical point, and indeed was given no opportunity of getting a word in edgeways as to the view he had formed of the case. He was only asked details about the exact time of his discovery (this question confused him rather) and the precise attitude in which the body lay. Instead of being criticized for disturbing the clues by removing the dead body, he was thanked for having removed it. Altogether, the proceedings struck him as singularly ill-calculated to assist in the clearing up of a mystery. It seemed rather as if Society were performing a solemn act of purification over the remains of the dead. In the end he sat down feeling exactly (the atmosphere helped) as if he were back at school again, had just been “put on construing,” not at the passage he had specially “mugged up,” but at the passage next door to it, and had acquitted himself better than he expected in the circumstances. The feeling was intensified when Marryatt got up; Marryatt was still intensely nervous over the prospect of a suicide verdict; and he answered the questions put to him confusedly and at random, like a schoolboy who has omitted the formality of preparing the lesson at all.