There was a pause. So far these two—the coroner and the witness—had seemed almost like two antagonists going through the first passes of a duel with foils. Steel had struck against steel, curt answers had followed brief questions. Now the combatants paused to draw breath. One of them was fighting the preliminary skirmish for his life against odds that were bound to overwhelm him in the end: the other was just a paid official, indifferent to the victim, interested only in the issue. The man standing at the foot of the table was certainly interesting: the coroner had made up his mind that he was the guilty party—a gentleman and yet a cowardly assassin; he amused himself during this brief pause with a quick analysis of the high-bred, impassive face—quite Saxon in character, fair and somewhat heavy of lid—in no way remarkable save for the present total lack of expression. There was neither indifference nor bravado, neither fear, remorse, nor defiance—only a mask made of wood, hiding every line of the mouth, and not allowing even the eyes to show any signs of vitality.
Beyond that the whole appearance was essentially English: the fair hair neatly groomed, with just a suspicion of curl here and there, and a glint of gold in the high lights, the stiff neck encased in its immaculate collar, the perfectly tailored clothes, the hands, large but well-formed and carefully tended, which lightly interlaced, hung in marble-like stillness before him.
When a man happens to be out in mid-winter with a stout stick in his hand, and he comes across a layer of ice on the top of a pool or a trough of water, he always—or nearly always—is at once a prey to the silly desire to break that layer of ice. The desire is irresistible, and the point of the stick at once goes to work on the smooth surface, chipping it if not actually succeeding in breaking it.
The same desire exists in a far stronger degree when the ice is a moral one—one that covers the real nature of another man: the cold impassiveness that hides the secret orchard to which no one but the owner has access. Then there is an irresistible longing to break that cold barrier, to look within, and to probe that hidden soul, if not within its innermost depths, at any rate below the ice-bound surface; to chip it, to mark it and break its invincible crust.
Some such feeling undoubtedly stirred at the back of the coroner's mind. The hide-bound, red-tape-ridden official was more moved than he would have cared to admit, by a sense of irritation at the placidity of this witness, who was even now almost on his trial. Therefore he had paused in his questionings, afraid lest that sense of irritation should carry him beyond the proper limits of his own powers.
And now he resumed more quietly, with his voice less trenchant and his own manner outwardly more indifferent.
"When," he asked, "did you last see the deceased?"
"In the lobby of the Veterans' Club," replied Luke, "the night before last."
"You had called there to see him?"
"Yes."