And he kindly put her on a now empty bench opposite to where the seven witnesses stood and sat with their eager, set faces, ready —­aye, more than ready—­to play their part.

For a moment every eye in the court was focused on Mrs. Bunting, but soon those who had stared so hungrily, so intently, at her, realised that she had nothing to do with the case.  She was evidently there as a spectator, and, more fortunate than most, she had a “friend at court,” and so was able to sit comfortably, instead of having to stand in the crowd.

But she was not long left in isolation.  Very soon some of the important-looking gentlemen she had seen downstairs came into the court, and were ushered over to her seat while two or three among them, including the famous writer whose face was so familiar that it almost seemed to Mrs. Bunting like that of a kindly acquaintance, were accommodated at the reporters’ table.

“Gentlemen, the Coroner.”

The jury stood up, shuffling their feet, and then sat down again; over the spectators there fell a sudden silence.

And then what immediately followed recalled to Mrs. Bunting, for the first time, that informal little country inquest of long ago.

First came the “Oyez!  Oyez!” the old Norman-French summons to all whose business it is to attend a solemn inquiry into the death —­sudden, unexplained, terrible—­of a fellow-being.

The jury—­there were fourteen of them—­all stood up again.  They raised their hands and solemnly chanted together the curious words of their oath.

Then came a quick, informal exchange of sentences ’twixt the coroner and his officer.

Yes, everything was in order.  The jury had viewed the bodies—­he quickly corrected himself—­the body, for, technically speaking, the inquest just about to be held only concerned one body.

And then, amid a silence so absolute that the slightest rustle could be heard through the court, the coroner—­a clever-looking gentleman, though not so old as Mrs. Bunting thought he ought to have been to occupy so important a position on so important a day—­gave a little history, as it were, of the terrible and mysterious Avenger crimes.

He spoke very clearly, warming to his work as he went on.

He told them that he had been present at the inquest held on one of The Avenger’s former victims.  “I only went through professional curiosity,” he threw in by way of parenthesis, “little thinking, gentlemen, that the inquest on one of these unhappy creatures would ever be held in my court.”

On and on, he went, though he had, in truth, but little to say, and though that little was known to every one of his listeners.

Mrs. Bunting heard one of the older gentlemen sitting near her whisper to another:  “Drawing it out all he can; that’s what he’s doing.  Having the time of his life, evidently!” And then the other whispered back, so low that she could only just catch the words, “Aye, aye.  But he’s a good chap—­I knew his father; we were at school together.  Takes his job very seriously, you know—­he does to-day, at any rate.”