The wound, which was a deep one, was five and a half inches from right to left across the throat to a point under the left ear.  The upper portion of the windpipe was severed, and likewise the jugular vein.  The muscular coating of the carotid artery was divided.  There was a slight cut, as if in continuation of the wound, on the thumb of the left hand.  The hands were clasped underneath the head.  There was no blood on the right hand.  The wound could not have been self-inflicted.  A sharp instrument had been used, such as a razor.  The cut might have been made by a left-handed person.  No doubt death was practically instantaneous.  I saw no signs of a struggle about the body or the room.  I noticed a purse on the dressing-table, lying next to Madame Blavatsky’s big book on Theosophy.  Sergeant Runnymede drew my attention to the fact that the door had evidently been locked and bolted from within.”

By a JURYMAN:  I do not say the cuts could not have been made by a right-handed person.  I can offer no suggestion as to how the inflictor of the wound got in or out.  Extremely improbable that the cut was self-inflicted.  There was little trace of the outside fog in the room.

Police constable Williams said he was on duty in the early hours of the morning of the 4th inst.  Glover Street lay within his beat.  He saw or heard nothing suspicious.  The fog was never very dense, though nasty to the throat.  He had passed through Glover Street about half-past four.  He had not seen Mr. Mortlake or anybody else leave the house.

The Court here adjourned, the coroner and the jury repairing in a body to 11 Glover Street, to view the house and the bedroom of the deceased.  And the evening posters announced “The Bow Mystery Thickens.”

III

Before the inquiry was resumed, all the poor wretches in custody had been released on suspicion that they were innocent; there was not a single case even for a magistrate.  Clues, which at such seasons are gathered by the police like blackberries off the hedges, were scanty and unripe.  Inferior specimens were offered them by bushels, but there was not a good one among the lot.  The police could not even manufacture a clue.

Arthur Constant’s death was already the theme of every hearth, railway-carriage, and public-house.  The dead idealist had points of contact with so many spheres.  The East-end and the West-end alike were moved and excited, the Democratic Leagues and the Churches, the Doss-houses and the Universities.  The pity of it!  And then the impenetrable mystery of it!