The coroner at once resumed:
"But at five minutes before twelve, Mr. Hildreth, the tramp walked into the widow's yard. Now, allowing only two minutes for your interview with that lady, the conclusion remains that you were in the house when he came up to it. Yet you declare that, although you stood in full view of the yard, you did not see him."
"You figure closer than an astronomer calculating an eclipse," burst from the young man's lips in a flash of that resolution which had for the last few minutes animated him. "How do you know your witnesses have been so exact to a second when they say this and that of the goings and comings you are pleased to put into an arithmetical problem. A minute or two one way or the other would make a sad discrepancy in your calculations, Mr. Coroner."
"I know it," assented Dr. Tredwell, quietly ignoring the other's heat; "but if the jury will remember, there were four witnesses, at least, who testified to the striking of the town clock just as the tramp finally issued from the lane, and one witness, of well-known accuracy in matters of detail, who declared on oath that she had just dropped her eyes from that same clock when she observed the tramp go into the widow's gate, and that it was five minutes to twelve exactly. But, lest I do seem too nice in my calculations," the coroner inexorably pursued, "I will take the trouble of putting it another way. At what time did you leave the hotel, Mr. Hildreth?"
"I don't know," was the testy response.
"Well, I can tell you," the coroner assured him. "It was about twenty minutes to twelve, or possibly earlier, but no later. My reason for saying this," he went on, drawing once more before him the fatal sheet of paper, "is that Mrs. Dayton's children next door were out playing in front of this house for some few minutes previous to the time the tramp came into the lane. As you did not see them you must have arrived here before they began their game, and that, at the least calculation, would make the time as early as a quarter to twelve."
"Well," the fierce looks of the other seemed to say, "and what if it was?"
"Mr. Hildreth," continued the coroner, "if you were in this house at a quarter to twelve and did not leave it till two minutes before, and the interview was as you say a mere interchange of a dozen words or so, that could not possibly have occupied more than three minutes; where were you during all the rest of the time that must have elapsed after you finished your interview and the moment you left the house?"
It was a knock-down question. This aristocratic-looking young gentleman who had hitherto held himself erect before them, notwithstanding the humiliating nature of the inquiries which had been propounded to him, cringed visibly and bowed his head as if a stroke of vital force had descended upon it. Bringing his fist down on the table near which he stood, he seemed to utter a muttered curse, while the veins swelled on his forehead so powerfully that more than one person present dropped their eyes from a spectacle which bore so distinctly the stamp of guilt.
"You have not answered," intimated the coroner, after a moment of silent waiting.