The two officials smiled; they could not help it.  Sweetwater was certainly no beauty, and to associate him in any kind of physical comparison with the dead girl was certainly incongruous.  Yet they both felt that the point just advanced by them should be settled and settled now while the requisite remembrance was fresh in the mind of this invaluable witness.  But in order to get at what they wanted, some show of consideration for his feelings was evidently necessary.  Police persistence often defeats its own ends.  If he was to be made to do what they wished, it would have to be through the persuasion of some one outside the Force.  To whom should they appeal?  The question answered itself.  Mr. Roberts was approaching from the front, and to him they turned.  Would he use his influence with this stranger?

“He may listen to you,” urged the Coroner in the whispered conference which now followed, “if you explain to him how much patience you and all the rest of the people in the building have had to exercise in this unhappy crisis.  He seems a good enough fellow, but not in line with our ideas.”

Mr. Roberts, who saw the man for the first time, surveyed him in astonishment.

“Where was he standing?” he asked.

“Just where you see him now—­or so he says.”

“He couldn’t have been.  Some one would have observed him—­the woman who was in the compartment with the stricken girl, or the man studying coins in the one next to it.”

“So it would seem,” admitted the Coroner.  “But if he were behind the pedestal——­”

“Behind the pedestal!”

“That’s where we think he was.  But no matter about that now!—­we can explain that to you later.  At present all we want is for you to reassure him.”

Not altogether pleased with his task, but seeing no good reason for declining it, the affable director approached the Englishman, who, recognizing one of his own social status, seemed to take heart and turn a willing ear to Mr. Roberts’ persuasions.  The result was satisfactory.

When the Coroner again called Mr. Travis’ attention to Sweetwater awaiting orders in the opposite gallery he did not refuse to look, though his whole manner showed how much he was affected by this forced acquiescence in their plans.

“You will watch the movements of the young man we have placed over there,” the Coroner had said; “and when he strikes a position corresponding to that taken by the young lady at the moment she was shot, lift up your hand, thus.  I will not ask you to speak.”

“But you forget that there is blood on that floor.  That man will step in it.  I cannot lend myself to such sacrilege.  It is wrong.  Let the lady be buried first.”

The outburst was so natural, the horror so unfeigned, that not only the men he addressed but all within hearing showed the astonishment it caused.

“One would think you knew the victim of this random shot!” the Coroner intimated with a fresh and close scrutiny of this very reluctant witness.  “Did you?  Was she a friend of yours?”