Dundee.  And that was about all, and it came to this:  that here was a man who, in registering at a Peebles hotel, called himself John Phillips and wrote down that he came from Glasgow, where, up to that moment, the police had failed to trace anything relating to such a person; and this man had travelled to Cornhill station from Peebles, been seen in an adjacent inn, had then disappeared, and had been found, about two hours later, murdered in a lonely place.

“And the question comes to this,” observed the coroner, “what was this man doing at that place, and who was he likely to meet there?  We have some evidence on that point, and,” he added, with one shrewd glance at the legal folk in front of him and another at the jurymen at his side, “I think you’ll find, gentlemen of the jury, that it’s just enough to whet your appetite for more.”

They had kept my evidence to the last, and if there had been a good deal of suppressed excitement in the crowded room while Chisholm and the doctor and the landlord of the inn on the other side of Coldstream Bridge gave their testimonies, there was much more when I got up to tell my tale, and to answer any questions that anybody liked to put to me.  Mine, of course, was a straight enough story, told in a few sentences, and I did not see what great amount of questioning could arise out of it.  But whether it was that he fancied I was keeping something back, or that he wanted, even at that initial stage of the proceedings, to make matters as plain as possible, a solicitor that was representing the county police began to ask me questions.

“There was no one else with you in the room when this man Gilverthwaite gave you his orders?” he asked.

“No one,” I answered.

“And you’ve told me everything that he said to you?”

“As near as I can recollect it, every word.”

“He didn’t describe the man you were to meet?”

“He didn’t—­in any way.”

“Nor tell you his name?”

“Nor tell me his name.”

“So that you’d no idea whatever as to who it was that you were to meet, nor for what purpose he was coming to meet Gilverthwaite, if Gilverthwaite had been able to meet him?”

“I’d no idea,” said I.  “I knew nothing but that I was to meet a man and give him a message.”

He seemed to consider matters a little, keeping silence, and then he went off on another tack.

“What do you know of the movements of this man Gilverthwaite while he was lodging with your mother?” he asked.

“Next to nothing,” I replied.

“But how much?” he inquired.  “You’d know something.”

“Of my own knowledge, next to nothing,” I repeated.  “I’ve seen him in the streets, and on the pier, and taking his walks on the walls and over the Border Bridge; and I’ve heard him say that he’d been out in the country.  And that’s all.”

“Was he always alone?” he asked.

“I never saw him with anybody, never heard of his talking to anybody, nor of his going to see a soul in the place,” I answered; “and first and last, he never brought any one into our house, nor had anybody asked at the door for him.”