"And who are you, if I may ask?" bluntly demanded the Coroner.
"My name is Ferdinand Howe, sir," the stranger replied, with dignity. "My home is in Bruceville, Georgia, and I am in your city on business for the bank of which I happen to be the cashier. Doctor Westbrook and I are old college-mates, and I know about as much of this affair as he has told you; that is to say, I was there—the other side of that partition in the laboratory—when the murdered man fell where you now see him. The first intimation I had that anything was amiss was when the outside door crashed open and the body fell to the floor. I ran into this room, saw the man gasp twice, and then lie motionless. I never saw him, and never heard of him, before this night. That is all."
Mr. Howe appeared to be about the Doctor's age, and was a fair type of the American man of business. He was well groomed, clean, and possessed of a clear, steady eye.
"And you saw and heard no one else?" Mr. Merkel persisted.
Howe shook his head. "No, sir; no one. There was not the slightest thing to indicate—"
He stopped. He shot a swift, startled glance at Doctor Westbrook; but the Doctor remained unconscious of it, evidently absorbed in his own cogitations. Mr. Converse's eyes watched the speaker through mere slits, so nearly closed were they; but a gleam came from between the contracted lids that might have betrayed a quickened interest somewhere in the depths of his big frame.
"No," concluded Howe presently, in tones measurably subdued; "I neither saw nor heard anybody else, but—" With compressed lips he indicated by a nod the form on the floor. "You must remember," he concluded, "I was in the next room, looking out the window into the light-well."
Converse looked quickly from the speaker to Lynden. That young man was staring strangely at Howe, evidently impressed by something unusual in his concluding words.
Suddenly the young man caught Converse's intent look, and his own eyes lowered. Next they shifted to Doctor Westbrook, at whom he continued to look in a moody silence.
The Coroner, apparently more and more at sea, stared first at one and then another of the room's occupants, at the partition which separated the reception-room from the laboratory, and lastly through the open doorway into the hall. The most extreme of the different points were not over six feet apart; and for three men—wide awake and in full possession of their faculties—to be so close to such a crime and know nothing of it until it was all over! How could human ingenuity supply an explanation for so incongruous a circumstance? Had the man committed suicide? The most cursory examination of the wound demonstrated beyond doubt that, however else it might have been inflicted, Alberto de Sanchez was incapable of having administered it himself.