"A huge pet cat made playful pounces at his trousers."
They never did get at the rights of the matter, but the coroner was somewhat annoyed by the cat, during the inquest. He was sitting in the chair the dead man had sat in, beside the table on which the telephone stood. And the cat buffeted his coat-tails; hanging down, with playful pats of its paws. The sound was very much like that of a man drumming softly and meditatively upon a table.
But it was not that which annoyed the coroner. He liked cats. What did annoy him was the fact that he had put his lighted cigarette on the edge of the table for an instant, and the cat sank its claws in the table-cover. With the jerk, the cigarette fell from the table into the coroner's pocket, and burned a hole through to the skin.
"If that cigarette had been in its case, now," said the coroner, smiling at his own feeble joke, "it wouldn't have done any harm."