The jury—there were fourteen of them—all stood up again. They raised their hands and solemnly chanted together the curious words of their oath.
Then came a quick, informal exchange of sentences ’twixt the coroner and his officer.
Yes, everything was in order. The jury had viewed the bodies—he quickly corrected himself—the body, for, technically speaking, the inquest just about to be held only concerned one body.
And then, amid a silence so absolute that the slightest rustle could be heard through the court, the coroner—a clever-looking gentleman, though not so old as Mrs. Bunting thought he ought to have been to occupy so important a position on so important a day—gave a little history, as it were, of the terrible and mysterious Avenger crimes.
He spoke very clearly, warming to his work as he went on.
He told them that he had been present at the inquest held on one of The Avenger’s former victims. “I only went through professional curiosity,” he threw in by way of parenthesis, “little thinking, gentlemen, that the inquest on one of these unhappy creatures would ever be held in my court.”
On and on, he went, though he had, in truth, but little to say, and though that little was known to every one of his listeners.
Mrs. Bunting heard one of the older gentlemen sitting near her whisper to another: “Drawing it out all he can; that’s what he’s doing. Having the time of his life, evidently!” And then the other whispered back, so low that she could only just catch the words, “Aye, aye. But he’s a good chap—I knew his father; we were at school together. Takes his job very seriously, you know—he does to-day, at any rate.”
She was listening intently, waiting for a word, a sentence, which would relieve her hidden terrors, or, on the other hand, confirm them. But the word, the sentence, was never uttered.
And yet, at the very end of his long peroration, the coroner did throw out a hint which might mean anything—or nothing.