The answer was somewhat unlooked for. Stretching half-way across the table, Jim Baker shook his fist at the coroner with an amount of vigour which induced that officer to draw his chair a little further back.
"Don't you call me a murderer!"
"What do you mean, sir, by your extraordinary behaviour? I did not call you a murderer; I said nothing of the kind."
"You said that the man who shot him, stabbed him. I say it's a lie; because he didn't!"
"How do you know? Stop! Before you say another word it's my duty to inform you that if you have any evidence to offer, before you do so you must be duly sworn; and, further, in your present condition it becomes essential that I should warn you to be on your guard, lest you should say something which may show a guilty knowledge."
"And what do you call a guilty knowledge? I ask you that."
"As for instance--"
Mr Baker cut the coroner's explanation uncivilly short.
"I don't want none of your talk. I'm here to speak out, that's what I'm here for. I'm going to do it. When you say that the man as shot him knifed him, I say it's a damned lie. How do I know? Because I'm the man as shot him; and, beyond giving him a dose of pepper, I'm ready to take my Bible oath that I never laid my hand on him."
Mr Baker's words were followed by silence--that sort of silence which the newspapers describe by the word "sensation." People pressed further into the room, craning their heads to get a better view of the speaker. The coroner searched him with his eyes, as if to make sure that the man was in possession of at least some of his senses.