"'I give a genteel cough,' she resumed with unruffled dignity, 'and opened the door. Miss Smith, she was all flushed and I could see that she'd been crying; but the Captain; 'e just walked out of the room, and didn't say not another word.' "By this time," the Old Man in the Corner went on dryly, "we must suppose that the amateur detectives and the large body of unintelligent public felt that they were being cheated. Never had there been so simple a case. Here, with the testimony of Mrs. Rumble, was the whole thing clear as daylight--motive, quarrel, means, everything was there already. No chance of exercising those powers of deduction so laboriously acquired by a systematic study of detective fiction. Had it not been for the position of the accused and his popularity in Broxmouth society, all interest in the case would have departed in the wake of Mrs. Rumble, and at first, when Miss Amelia Smith, sister of the deceased, was called, her appearance only roused languid curiosity. Miss Amelia looked what, in fact, she was: a retired school marm, and wore the regular hallmark of impecunious and somewhat soured spinsterhood. "'Janet often told me,' she said, in the course of her evidence, 'that she was quite sure there was roguery going on in the affairs of the Institute, because she knew for a fact that subscriptions were constantly pouring in from the public, far in excess of what was being spent for the welfare of the boys. I often used to urge her to go straight to the governors or even to the President himself about the whole matter, but she would always give the same disheartened reply. General Arkwright Jones, it seems, had made it a condition when he accepted the presidency that he was never to be worried about the administration of the place, and he refused to have anything to do with the handling of the subscriptions; as for the governors, my poor sister declared that they cared more for tennis parties than for the welfare of a lot of poor officers' children.' "But a moment or two later we realised that Miss Amelia Smith was keeping her titbit of evidence until the end. It seems that she had not even spoken about it to the police, determined as she was, no doubt, to create a sensation for once in her monotonous and dreary life. So now she pursed up her lips tighter than before, and after a moment's dramatic silence, she said: "'The day before her death, my poor sister was very depressed. In the late afternoon, when she came in for tea, I could see that she had been crying. I guessed, of course, what was troubling her, but I didn't say much. Captain Franklin Marston was in the habit of calling for Janet in the evening, and they would go for a walk together; at eight o'clock on that sad evening I asked her whether Captain Marston was coming as usual; whereupon she became quite excited, and said: "No, no, I don't wish to see him!" and after a while she added in a voice choked with tears: "Never again!"