“There’s nothing whatever for me to do, Sir Chichester,” he said.  “The poor creature must have died somewhere about one o’clock of the morning.”  He saw Sir Chichester with a start fall once more to reading the paragraph in the Harpoon, and continued with a warmth of admiration, “Eh, but those newspaper fellows are quick!  I saw the Harpoon this morning, and it was lucky I did.  For I’d ha’ been on my rounds otherwise when that young fellow called for me.”

“It was good of you to come so quickly,” said Sir Chichester.

“I shall charge for it,” replied Dr. McKerrel.  “I’ll just step round to the Peace Officer at once, and I’ll be obliged if you’ll not have that glass with the chloroform touched again.  I have put it aside.”

Martin Hillyard was disturbed.

“There will have to be an inquest then?” he asked.

“Aye, but there wull.”

“In a case of this kind,” Sir Chichester suggested, “it would be better if it could be avoided.”

“But it can’t,” answered Dr. McKerrel bluntly.  “And for my part, I tell you frankly, Sir Chichester, I have no great pity for poor neurotic bodies like the young lady upstairs.  If she had had a little of my work to do, she would have been too tired in the evening to think about her worries.”  He looked at the disconsolate Baronet with a sudden twinkle in his eye.  “Eh, man, but you’ll get all the publicity you want over this case.”

Sir Chichester had no rejoinder to the quip; and his unwonted meekness caused McKerrel to relent.  He stopped at the door, and said: 

“I’ll give you a hint.  The coroner can cut the inquest down to the barest necessary limits, if he has got all the facts clear beforehand.  If he has got to explore in the dark, he’ll ask questions here and questions there, and you never know, nor does he, what he’s going to drag out to light in the end.  But let him have it all clear and straight first!  There’s only one character I know of, more free from regulations and limitations and red-tape than a coroner, and that’s the police-sergeant who runs the coroner.  Goodday to you.”

A telegram was brought to Martin Hillyard whilst McKerrel was yet speaking; and Hillyard read it with relief.  Mario Escobar had been taken that morning as he was leaving the hotel for the morning train to London.  He was now on his way to an internment camp.  So that complication was smoothed out at all events.  He agreed with Sir Chichester Splay that it would be prudent to carry out McKerrel’s suggestion at once.

“I will make the document out,” said Sir Chichester importantly.  Give him a little work which set him in the limelight as the leader of the Chorus, and nothing could keep down his spirits.  He took a sheet of foolscap, a blotting pad, a heavy inkstand, and a quill pen—­Sir Chichester never used anything but a quill pen—­to the big table in the middle of the hall, and wrote in a fair, round hand: