Then the sergeant stated perspiringly in the hot room, buttoned up in his coat, that the cabman had been found; and in due course a red-nosed, prominent-eyed member of the four-wheeled fraternity corroborated John Whyley’s evidence as to the three men whom he took in his cab. He reiterated the statement that “one on ’em was very tight;” told that he drove them to an hotel in Surrey Street, close to the Embankment, and corrected himself as to the driving, because “You see, gents, it was like this here: the fog was that thick, if you sat on the box you couldn’t see the ’oss’s tail, let alone his ears, and you had to lead him all the way.”
Did the men go into the hotel?
He couldn’t say; they helped out the one as was so very tight, and they gave him arf-suffrin—first money he’d took that night, and the last, on account of the fog.
And where did the three men go—into the hotel?
He didn’t know; they seemed to him to go into the fog. Everythink went into the fog that night or come out on it. It was all fog as you might ’most ha’ cut with a knife; and when he had a wash next morning, his face was that black with the sut you might ha’ took him for a sweep.
But the man who seemed to be drunk, did he say anything?
Not a word.
“Would he know the men again?”
Not likely; and besides, if he took notice of all parties as was very tight, and as he took home in his keb, he’d have enough to do. That there fog was so thick that—
The coroner said that would do, and after the people at the hotel had been called to prove that no one had entered their place after eleven o’clock that night, and that the bell had not been rung, the coroner said that the case would have for the present to be left in the hands of the police, who would, he hoped, elucidate what was at present one of the mysteries of our great city. He did not think he was justified in starting a theory of his own as to the causes of the dramatic scene that must have taken place in Dr Chartley’s surgery. They were met to investigate the causes of the death of this man, who was at present unknown. No doubt the police would be able to trace the three men who left the surgery that night, and during the adjournment Dr Chartley would probably recover; and so on, and so on; a long harangue in which it seemed as if the fog, of which so much mention had been made, had got into the evidence.