“No:  the mate stops them; see, he’s calling the fellow.  I can hear his voice, can’t you?  Sweetwater’s game is up.  He’ll have to leave in a hurry.  What’s the rumpus now?”

“Nothing, only they’ve scattered to look for him; the fox is down in the cabins and won’t come up, laughing in his sleeve, no doubt, at keeping the vessel waiting while he hunts up his witness.”

“If it’s one of those two men he’s laying a trap for he won’t snare him in a hurry.  They’re sneaks, those two, and—­Why, the sailors are coming back shaking their heads.  I can almost hear from here the captain’s oaths.”

“And such a favourable wind for getting out of the harbour!  Sweetwater, my boy, you are distinguishing yourself.  If your witness don’t pan out well you won’t hear the last of this in a hurry.”

“It looks as if they meant to sail without waiting to put him ashore,” observed Frederick in a low tone, too carefully modulated not to strike his father as unnatural.

“By jingoes, so it does!” ejaculated Knapp.  “There go the sails!  The pilot’s hand is on the wheel, and Dr. Talbot, are you going to let your cunning amateur detective and his important witness slip away from you like this?”

“I cannot help myself,” said the coroner, a little dazed himself at this unexpected chance.  “My voice wouldn’t reach them from this place; besides they wouldn’t heed me if it did.  The ship is already under way and we won’t see Sweetwater again till the pilot’s boat comes back.”

Mr. Sutherland moved from the window and crossed to the door like a man in a dream.  Frederick, instantly conscious of his departure, turned to follow him, but presently stopped and addressing Knapp for the first time, observed quietly: 

“This is all very exciting, but I think your estimate of this fellow Sweetwater is just.  He’s a busybody and craves notoriety above everything.  He had no witness on board, or, if he had, it was an imaginary one.  You will see him return quite crestfallen before night, with some trumped-up excuse of mistaken identity.”

The shrug which Knapp gave dismissed Sweetwater as completely from the affair as if he had never been in it.

“I think I may now regard myself as having this matter in my sole charge,” was his curt remark, as he turned away, while Frederick, with a respectful bow to Dr. Talbot, remarked in leaving: 

“I am at your service, Dr. Talbot, if you require me to testify at the inquest in regard to this will.  My testimony can all be concentrated into the one sentence, ’I did not expect this bequest, and have no theories to advance in explanation of it.’  But it has made me feel myself Mrs. Webb’s debtor, and given me a justifiable interest in the inquiry which, I am told, you open to-morrow into the cause and manner of her death.  If there is a guilty person in this case, I shall raise no barrier in the way of his conviction.”

And while the coroner’s face still showed the embarrassment which this last sentence called up, his mind being now, as ever, fixed on Amabel, Frederick offered his arm to his father, whose condition was not improved by the excitements of the last half-hour, and proceeded to lead him from the building.