The next time I meet you, wherever it is, and whenever it is, whether tomorrow, or a year hence, or five years hence, or ten years hence, I shall shoot you dead like the dog you are.
JOHN HARBOROUGH.’”
The Coroner laid the letter on his desk, took off his spectacles, leaned back in his chair, and looked round him with the air of a man whom something has suddenly wearied. Just as suddenly he leaned forward again, picked up the letter, and passed it to Mr. Fransemmery. As it went from hand to hand amongst the jurymen, the barrister glanced at the detective and nodded. Blick vanished from the witness-box, and the barrister, catching an inclination of the head from the Coroner, turned to the latter’s officer.
“Call John Harborough,” he said in a low voice.
Harborough once more walked to the witness-box. During the reading of the letter he had sat steadily watching the Coroner; his face, grim and impassive, betrayed nothing of whatever it was that he was thinking. It remained equally impassive as he took the oath and faced Coroner, jurymen, and the barrister, who, as the witness came forward, had possessed himself of the letter and now stood holding it in his right hand. Waiting until Harborough had taken the oath, he passed the letter across the table to a policeman and motioned him to hand it to the witness. Amidst a dead silence he asked his first question, sinking his voice to a low, but intensely clear whisper and fixing Harborough with a steady look.
“Did you write that letter?”
“I did.”
“Did you mean what is said in it?”
“When I wrote it—yes.”
“If you had met Guy Markenmore on the morrow you speak of, would you have shot him like a dog?”