Dr Diplock, the Coroner, noticed it, and his sharp injunction to answer his question brought me back to a knowledge of my surroundings. I was standing in full view of an assembly of some three hundred persons, so filled by curiosity, and eager to hear my story, that the silence was complete. "I beg your pardon, but I did not hear the question," I said, bracing myself with effort. "The deceased was your friend, I believe?" "Yes," I answered. "He shared a furnished cottage with me at Shepperton. I have known him for some time." "Were you with him at the day of his death?" "I left him at Shepperton in the morning, when I went to town, and he called upon me at the Foreign Office about one o'clock. We lunched together, and then, returning to Downing Street, parted. We met again at Shepperton later, and came here, to Staines, in response to an invitation to dinner at `The Nook.' I--" A woman's low, despairing cry broke the silence, and as I turned to the assembly I saw, straight before me, Ella, rigid, almost statuesque. Her terror-stricken gaze met mine; her eyes seemed riveted upon me. "Kindly proceed with your evidence," exclaimed the Coroner, impatiently. "We dined at `The Nook,'" I went on, turning again to face him. "Then we went for a row, and on our return Mr Ogle left us to walk back to Shepperton." "Alone?" "Yes." "Why did you not accompany him?" "Because I had, during the evening, received a telegram summoning me away." "Who was the message from?" "The Earl of Warnham," I replied. Then obeying his request to continue, I explained how, on leaving "The Nook" about an hour later to catch my last train, I had stumbled upon the body of my friend. Then, when I had concluded, the Coroner commenced his cross-examination. Many of his questions were purely formal in character, but presently, when he began to take me through the events which occurred at the Foreign Office, I experienced a very uncomfortable feeling, fearing lest I should divulge the suspicions that had during the last half-hour been aroused within me. It was, I recognised, absolutely necessary that I should keep my discovery a strict secret, for upon my ability to do so everything depended. "Was there any reason why he should call for you at the Foreign Office and ask you to lunch with him? Was he in the habit of doing this?" inquired the Coroner. "No; there seemed no reason, beyond the fact that he was compelled to come to town, and merely wanted to pass an idle hour away," I said. "Why did he go to London?" "I have no idea what business took him there." "He never told you that he had any enemy, I suppose?" the official asked, with an air of mystery. "Never. He was, on the contrary, most popular." "And no incident other than what you have related occurred at the Foreign Office? You are quite certain of this?"