“Very meager,” promptly responded the coroner. “The lady came from a dressmaker’s establishment, and before entering her carriage told her driver to drive directly home to this place.
“As soon as he heard the door close, he drove off, making but one stop on his way here, and that at Fifty-eighth Street, where his carriage was blocked for a minute or two.
“Arriving here, as the lady did not get out, he got down from his box and opened the door, to find her unconscious. He gave the alarm; the woman was carried into her home, and a doctor soon coming pronounced her dead.”
“No one was known to have been in the carriage with her?” asked Nick.
“No. That is the great mystery. I was disposed at first to look upon it as suicide. I have not abandoned that idea entirely yet, though all the physicians and surgeons who have examined the body say it is not probable.
“However, the body lies in the parlor. Go and look at it, and after you have made your first investigation, I shall be obliged if you will come and talk with me about it.”
The coroner stepped back and opened the door for Nick to pass through, closing the door after him and going his way.
Nick passed into the parlor, and there found Mrs. Constant lying in the box the undertaker had provided.
He stood looking down upon her face, thinking that death had brought its changes and sharpened peculiarities of features that he had not noticed in life.
While he looked, the undertaker came from a rear room, looking at him inquiringly. Nick said, quietly: