Mrs. Pierce began to weep silently.  Gregory Hall looked startled, as if the mere idea of Miss Lloyd’s implication was a new thought to him.  Lawyer Randolph looked considerably disturbed, and I at once suspected that his legal mind would not allow him to place too much dependence on the statements of the girl’s sympathetic friends.

Mr. Hamilton, another of the jurors whom I liked, seemed to be thoughtfully weighing the evidence.  He was not so well acquainted with Miss Lloyd as the two men who had just spoken in her behalf, and he made a remark somewhat diffidently.

“I agree,” he said, “with the sentiments just expressed; but I also think that we should endeavor to find some further clues or evidence.  Had Mr. Crawford any enemies who would come at night to kill him?  Or are there any valuables missing?  Could robbery have been the motive?”

“It does not seem so,” replied the coroner.  “Nothing is known to be missing.  Mr. Crawford’s watch and pocket money were not disturbed.”

“The absence of the weapon is a strange factor in the case,” put in Mr. Orville, apparently desirous of having his voice heard as well as those of the other jurors.

“Yes,” agreed Mr. Monroe; “and yet it is not strange that the criminal carried away with him what might have been a proof of his identity.”

“Does Miss Lloyd own a pistol?” blurted out Mr. Parmalee.

Gregory Hall gave him an indignant look, but Coroner Monroe seemed rather glad to have the question raised—­probably so that it could be settle at once in the negative.

And it was.

“No,” replied Mrs. Pierce, when the query was put to her.  “Both Florence and I are desperately afraid of firearms.  We wouldn’t dream of owning a pistol—­either of us.”

Of course, this was significant, but in no way decisive.  Granting that Miss Lloyd could have been the criminal, it would have been possible for her secretly to procure a revolver, and secretly to dispose of it afterward.  Then, too, a small revolver had been used.  To be sure, this did not necessarily imply that a woman had used it, but, taken in connection with the bag and the rose petals, it gave food for thought.

But the coroner seemed to think Mrs. Pierce’s assertions greatly in Miss Lloyd’s favor, and, being at the end of his list of witnesses, he inquired if any one else in the room knew of anything that could throw light on the matter.

No one responded to this invitation, and the coroner then directed the jury to retire to find a verdict.  The six men passed into another room, and I think no one who awaited their return apprehended any other result than the somewhat unsatisfactory one of “person or persons unknown.”

And this was what the foreman announced when the jury returned after their short collocation.

Then, as a jury, they were dismissed, but from that moment the mystery of Joseph Crawford’s death became the absorbing thought of all West Sedgwick.