The Lady Sleuths MEGAPACK TM(322)

                I did not know what to think; so forbore to think anything. Meanwhile the examination went on.

                “Mr. Van Burnam, I have been told that the locket I see there dangling from your watch-chain contains a lock of your wife’s hair. Is it so?”

                “I have a lock of her hair in this; yes.”

                “Here is a lock clipped from the head of the unknown woman whose identity we seek. Have you any objection to comparing the two?”

                “It is not an agreeable task you have set me,” was the imperturbable response; “but I have no objection to doing what you ask.” And calmly lifting the chain, he took off the locket, opened it, and held it out courteously toward the Coroner. “May I ask you to make the first comparison,” he said.

                The Coroner, taking the locket, laid the two locks of brown hair together, and after a moment’s contemplation of them both, surveyed the young man seriously, and remarked:

                “They are of the same shade. Shall I pass them down to the jury?”

                Howard bowed. You would have thought he was in a drawing-room, and in the act of bestowing a favor. But his brother Franklin showed a very different countenance, and as for their father, one could not even see his face, he so persistently held up his hand before it.



                             The jury, wide-awake now, passed the locket along, with many sly nods and a few whispered words. When it came back to the Coroner, he took it and handed it to Mr. Van Burnam, saying:

                “I wish you would observe the similarity for yourself. I can hardly detect any difference between them.”

                “Thank you! I am willing to take your word for it,” replied the young man, with most astonishing aplomb. And Coroner and jury for a moment looked baffled, and even Mr. Gryce, of whose face I caught a passing glimpse at this instant, stared at the head of his cane, as if it were of thicker wood than he expected and had more knotty points on it than even his accustomed hand liked to encounter.

                Another effort was not out of place, however; and the Coroner, summoning up some of the pompous severity he found useful at times, asked the witness if his attention had been drawn to the dead woman’s hands.

                He acknowledged that it had. “The physician who made the autopsy urged me to look at them, and I did; they were certainly very like my wife’s.”

                “Only like.”

                “I cannot say that they were my wife’s. Do you wish me to perjure myself?”

                “A man should know his wife’s hands as well as he knows her face.”

                “Very likely.”

                “And you are ready to swear these were not the hands of your wife?”

                “I am ready to swear I did not so consider them.”

                “And that is all?”

                “That is all.”

                The Coroner frowned and cast a glance at the jury. They needed prodding now and then, and this is the way he prodded them. As soon as they gave signs of recognizing the hint he gave them, he turned back, and renewed his examination in these words:



                             “Mr. Van Burnam, did your brother at your request hand you the keys of your father’s house on the morning of the day on which this tragedy occurred?”