Arthur Lovell, watching the case in the interests of Mr. Dunbar, asked several questions of the witnesses. Henry Dunbar was himself the first person examined. He gave a very simple and intelligible account of all that had taken place from the moment of his landing at Southampton.
"I found the deceased waiting to receive me when I landed," he said. "He told me that he came as a substitute for another person. I did not know him at first—that is to say, I did not recognize him as the valet who had been in my service prior to my leaving England five-and-thirty years ago. But he made himself known to me afterwards, and he told me that he had met his brother in London on the sixteenth of this month, and had travelled with him part of the way to Southampton. He also told me that, on the way to Southampton, his brother, Sampson Wilmot, a much older man than the deceased, was taken ill, and that the two men then parted company."
Mr. Dunbar had said all this with perfect self-possession, and with great deliberation. He was so very self-possessed, so very deliberate, that it seemed almost as if he had been reciting something which he had learned by heart.
Arthur Lovell, watching him very intently, saw this, and wondered at it. It is very usual for a witness, even the most indifferent witness, giving evidence about some trifling matter, to be confused, to falter, and hesitate, and contradict himself, embarrassed by the strangeness of his position. But Henry Dunbar was in nowise discomposed by the awful nature of the event which had happened. He was pale; but his firmly-set lips, his erect carriage, the determined glance of his eyes, bore witness to the strength of his nerves and the power of his intellect.
"The man must be made of iron," Arthur Lovell thought to himself. "He is either a very great man, or a very wicked one. I almost fear to ask myself which."
"Where did the deceased Joseph Wilmot say he left his brother Sampson, Mr. Dunbar?" asked the coroner.
"I do not remember."
The coroner scratched his chin, thoughtfully.
"That is rather awkward," he said; "the evidence of this man Sampson might throw some light upon this most mysterious event."
Mr. Dunbar then told the rest of his story.