A servant handed Hastings the blanket he had ordered. He looked toward the sky.
"I don't think it will rain any more," he said. "And it's best to leave things as they are until the coroner arrives.—He'll be here soon?"
"Should get here in half an hour or so," Judge Wilton informed him.
The detective arranged the blanket so that it covered the prone form completely, leaving the hat over the face as he had first placed it. With the exception of the hat, he had disturbed no part of the apparel. Even the folds of the raincoat, which fell away from the body and showed the rain-soaked black skirt, he left as he had found them. The white shirtwaist, also partly exposed now, was dry.
"Anybody move her hat before I came out?" he asked; "you, judge; or you, Mr. Webster?"
They had not touched it, they said; it was on the grass, beside her head, when they discovered the body, and they had left it there.
Again he was silent, brows drawn together as he stood over the murdered woman. Finally, he raised his head swiftly and, taking each in turn, searched sharply the countenances of the three men before him.
"Does—didn't anybody here know this woman?" he asked.
Berne Webster left his place at the opposite side of the body and came close to Hastings.
"I know who she is," he said, his voice lower even than before, as if he wished to keep that information from the servants.