"Ann Weber here gave the impression that the unknown visitor had stopped for a flirtation with her on the doorstep, and her smirking and pert glances rather irritated the coroner. He pulled her up sharply by putting a few straight questions to her. He wanted to pin her down to a definite statement as to the time when (1) she opened the door to Mr. Leighton, (2) she saw what she thought was Mr. Jessup go out of the house, and (3) the second visitor arrived. Though doubtful as to the exact time, Ann was quite sure that the three events occurred in the order in which she had originally related, and in this she was, of course, corroborating the evidence of the point policeman. But there was the mysterious contradiction. Ann Weber swore that Mr. Leighton followed her up from the servants' hall just after she had seen the mysterious individual go out by the front door. On the other hand, she couldn't swear what happened while she was busy in the kitchen getting the hot toddy for Mr. Leighton. She had been trying to make the fire burn up, and had rattled coals and fire-irons. She certainly had not heard any one using the telephone, which was in the office, and she did not know where Mr. Leighton was during that time. "Nor would she say what was in her mind when first she saw her employer lying dead over the desk and exclaimed: 'My God! He has killed him!' And when the coroner pressed her with questions she burst into tears. Except for this her evidence had, on the whole, been given with extraordinary self-possession. It was a terrible ordeal for a girl to have to stand up before a jury and, roughly speaking, to swear away the character of a man with whom she had been on intimate terms.... The character, did I say? I might just as well have said the life, because whatever doubts had lurked in the public mind about Arthur Leighton's guilt, or at least complicity in the crime, those doubts were dispelled by the girl's evidence. For I need not tell you, I suppose, that every man present that second day at the inquest had already made up his mind that Ann Weber was lying to save her sweetheart. No one believed in the mysterious impersonator of Mr. Jessup. It was Arthur Leighton, they argued, who had murdered his employer and robbed the till, and Ann Weber knew it and had invented the story in order to drag a red herring across the trail.