Passing the jury I seated myself near one of the windows beside a man whom I recalled having seen, but whom I could not at the moment place, and looked around in vain for Ruth. Evidently Coroner Graves (I obtained this information from the man beside me) intended to spare her as much as possible, for which consideration I thanked him from the bottom of my heart.
They must have been awaiting my presence since I was no sooner seated than the coroner called on Doctor Haskins to give his testimony. The doctor repeated what he had previously told me, that Philip Darwin had been shot through the left lung, that death had resulted from internal hemorrhage, and that the victim had lived at least twenty minutes after the bullet had penetrated his body. Asked if he had examined Mr. Darwin immediately upon his arrival, the doctor replied that he had first attended Mrs. Darwin and that it must have been ten or fifteen minutes later that he had entered the study. He had found Mr. Darwin lying back in his chair with a smile on his lips, one hand closed over a handkerchief, the other hanging limply over the arm of the chair. From the condition of the body he must have been dead from twenty to thirty minutes. Also there was a small abrasion on the little finger of his left hand, as if a ring had been violently removed. Questioned as to whether he was the family's physician, he said no, that he only knew Mr. Darwin by sight and had probably been summoned because he was the nearest doctor.
This evidence was partially corroborated by the coroner's physician, who added that he had made a post-mortem examination and had extracted the bullet, which had narrowly missed entering the heart. From the nature of the wound it would have been impossible for him to have shot himself, and the absence of all powder stains pointed to murder rather than suicide.
Then he continued, with a slightly commiserating look in Dr. Haskins' direction: "You have heard Dr. Haskins' testimony, your honor, that the victim lived twenty minutes after he was shot, and that at the time that the doctor examined him he had already been dead from twenty to thirty minutes. This last statement is correct. The post-mortem examination proves conclusively that Mr. Darwin died at midnight or shortly thereafter. From questions that I have already put to Mr. Orton I have learned that the shot was fired as the clock finished striking twelve, therefore since that was the only shot fired Mr. Darwin must have died immediately, or at the best, must have lived only five minutes, for Dr. Haskins was in the study by twelve-thirty."
"But," interrupted Dr. Haskins, "the nature of the wound is such that instantaneous death could not have possibly occurred."
"Please do not volunteer information unless you are being questioned," returned the coroner with some asperity. He turned to his physician, "You were saying, Doctor?"
Dr. Haskins shrugged his shoulders at the coroner's words, while his boyish face flushed angrily at the rebuke, and he walked away from the table, but turned to listen as the physician took up the cudgels again by answering the query he had propounded.
"Dr. Haskins is young in his profession and this is his first criminal case, hence his natural inference that because in his medical books such a wound should produce such results, therefore it must be so in practice," said the coroner's physician, with pompous superiority. "Now as a matter of fact where one man will live an hour another will survive only a few minutes, depending on the life each has led. Now Mr. Darwin, I have been told, led a very fast life, which probably accounts for his quick demise. After all, you see, it's a question of fitting your facts to the circumstances of your case and in this instance no other conclusion is possible."
I could see that Dr. Haskins was not at all convinced, and I set it down to professional jealousy and his desire not to be outdone by the coroner's physician. I can imagine that that "is young in his profession" rather stuck in his gorge.
When the physician had seated himself the coroner took up the bullet and called the detective, to whom he handed it along with another object that had been lying upon the table. Whereupon the detective took a step forward and held up the object for our inspection. It was a long-barreled thirty-eight caliber revolver, just the sort of weapon a man would keep in his house for use against burglars, since it insured a fair chance of more accurate marksmanship.