After the preliminaries, which followed the usual custom (for the coroner seemed singularly devoid of originality) the bodies were uncovered, and a murmur of excited expectancy ran through the crowd.  With morbid curiosity they pressed forward.  The reporters started to scribble in their note-books, a little pale and perturbed, for all their experience of such affairs.  One or two of the crowd gasped, and then shut their eyes.  Brellier exclaimed aloud in French, and for a moment covered his face with his hands; but ’Toinette made no murmur.  For she had not looked, would not look upon the grim terrors that lay there.  There was no need for that.

The coroner spoke, attacking the matter in a business-like fashion, and leaning down from his slightly elevated position upon the platform, pointed a finger at the singed and blackened puncture upon the temple of the thing that was once Dacre Wynne.  He pointed also to the wound in the head of Collins.

“It is apparent to all present,” he began in his flat voice, “that death has been caused in each case by a shot in the head.  That the two men were killed similarly is something in the nature of a coincidence.  The revolver that killed them was not the same in both cases.  In that of Mr. Wynne we have a bullet wound of an extremely small calibre.  We have, indeed, the actual bullet.  We also have, so we think, the revolver that fired the shot.  In the case of James Collins there has been no proof and no evidence of any one whom we know being concerned.  Therefore we will take the case of the man Dacre Wynne first.  He was killed by a revolver-shot in the temple, and death was—­or should have been—­instantaneous.  We will call the prisoner to speak first.”

He lifted a revolver from the table and held it in the hollow of his big palm.

“This revolver is yours?” he said, peering up under his shaggy eyebrows into Merriton’s face.

“It is.”

“Very good.  There has been, as you see, one shot fired from it.  Of the six chambers one is empty.”  He reached down and picked up a small something and held it in the hollow of the other hand, balancing one against the other as he talked.  “Sir Nigel, I ask you.  This we recognize as a bullet which belongs to this same revolver, the revolver which you have recognized and claimed as your own.  It is identical with those that are used in the cartridges of your revolver, is it not?”

Merriton bent his head.  His eyes had a dumb, hurt look, but over the crowded room his voice sounded firm and steady.

“It is.”

“Then I take it that, as this bullet was extracted from the head of the dead man, and as this revolver which you gave to the police yourself, and from which you say that you fired a shot that night, that you are guilty of his murder.  Is it not so?”

“I am not guilty.”

“H’m.”  For a moment there was silence.  Over the room came the sound of scratching pencils and pens, the shuffle of someone’s foot, a swift intake of the breath—­no more.  Then the coroner spoke again.