“I did.”
“Was the interview a long one?”
“I was sitting in front of the clock on my mantel-piece. He was in there just twenty minutes.”
I felt my breast heave, and straightening myself instinctively I met the concentrated gaze of a hundred pair of eyes leveled like one against me.
Did I smile? I felt like it; but if I did it must have expressed the irony with which I felt the meshes of the net in which I was caught tighten with every word which this man spoke.
The Coroner, who was the only person in the room who had not looked my way, went undeviatingly on.
“In what part of the house does this gentleman of whom we are speaking have his room?”
“On the same floor as mine; but further back at the end of a short hall.”
“Will you take the pointer from the officer and show the location of the second Mr. Bartholomew’s room?”
The witness did so.