While I spoke Billy had risen, and was pretending to examine the prints on my walls. I continued to talk; talking was, in fact, my morning's work that day. I finished, and there was a long silence. I thought my barrister-friend would never have done looking at those prints.

Then suddenly he crossed over to my table and stood leaning lightly on his fingertips.

"Why wasn't I told this sooner?" he asked, his eyes brightly on mine.

For a moment I thought he meant that our neglect to inform him had landed him into this equivocal position with regard to the coroner's jury, and was beginning to explain that, being everybody's business, it had also apparently been nobody's. But he cut me short.

"Oh, I don't mean that. Leave the inquest out of it for the present. What I mean is that I could have saved our friend a good deal of mental pain if I'd known—and you too," he added, "from the way you laughed just now."

"How?" I asked.

"In this way," he replied, sitting down on the edge of my table and giving his striped cashmere trousers a little hitch. "Say that a shot has been fired.... Philip, I take it, has been worrying about the consequences to this fellow Smith, and incidentally to Miss Merrow. Now if I'd been there to ask Rooke a few material questions I think I could have assured him that it's a thousand to one there won't be any consequences."

"Why not?"

"The state of the body," he replied promptly. "Rooke saw it, you say, or at any rate quite enough of it; I saw it too; and, shot or no shot, it wouldn't have taken me two minutes to get out of Rooke that there was no earthly possibility of proving that a shot caused death."

"You mean there were so many other good reasons?"

"Well, I'm not a doctor, but I should say at least a dozen. No wonder that fellow Westbury—ah, that's his name, not Westcott—had to make a bolt for it. Unless somebody can be produced who actually saw the shot fired there won't be the ghost of a Case, and I'm inclined to think that even then it would reduce itself to shooting with intent to kill or wound—which is a felony, of course, but not quite the same thing as murder. No, I think you can take it from me that there won't be any consequences."

I pondered this for a moment. Then I saw the flaw in it. Every man to his trade. Here was the advocate speaking, his whole acute mind trained to one single end—the getting of his man off. But I myself work in a different material and saw the Case from my own angle.

"One moment," I interposed. "When you say consequences you mean legal consequences? In other words he'd slip through your fingers simply because nobody actually saw him do it?"

"He wouldn't even be charged. That was practically a certainty before the inquest. It's overwhelming now the other fellow's buried."

"But legal consequences are not the only kind of consequences there are in the world."

"Oh, I'm not speaking of moral consequences. They're quite another matter," quoth Billy.

"Not as regards Esdaile's having a rotten time over this," I differed. "Let's look at it from another point of view for a moment. Neither you nor I know Smith. But Hubbard and Esdaile do, and there's this friendship between them. And mark you, friendship too isn't always the same thing it was before the War. There were lots of men we called friends then very much as a matter of habit; I mean it didn't often occur to you to ask what kind of a man your friend would be when it came to the pinch. We've all made new friends, and there are some of the old ones whose names we never want to hear again. You see what I mean? I mean the bond must be pretty strong for two men like Esdaile and Hubbard to take instantly to the thought of shielding Smith like ducks taking to water. I watched them—it was really exciting—you could read both their faces like books. Very well. Up to this point we're both talking the same language. When we say consequences we mean legal consequences.

"But here's where the difference comes in. I don't know what Hubbard's views are, as I haven't seen him since that night; but I do know what Esdaile's are. He's shielding Smith—but only till he hears what he's got to say for himself. He doesn't want to condemn him unheard. I admit that in the meantime he's taken certain rather risky steps, and my own opinion is that he won't find it very easy if he wants to retrace them again; the river'd have to be dredged for a pistol, for example, and Lord only knows what sort of a reason he'd give for even having interfered at all. But my point is that he's done nothing final yet. Smith's got to satisfy him, and if he can't—well, it can't be quite the same between them again after that, can it?"

"You mean their friendship's broken?"

"Well, that's not quite the way I should put it. It might break, or possibly it might not. What I mean is that a friendship with a man who's killed other men in battle isn't the same thing as one with a man who murders another in peace-time. It may be as good for all I know, as I haven't done either, but obviously it isn't the same."

"No, I suppose not," Mackwith agreed. "And as for retracing his steps, I agree with you that the best thing he can do is to keep his mouth shut. I certainly intend to about that inquest. Life's too short to go moving for Exhumation Orders."

"Well, next there's Joan Merrow. Exactly the same thing applies to her. Is she going to marry a soldier or an assassin? Is Esdaile going to let her? He's her guardian for all practical purposes, and he's got that question to answer."

The barrister laughed. "I don't think he need worry about that. Miss Merrow strikes me as a young woman who won't stand any nonsense from guardians. Well," he took up his hat and stick, "I must be getting along. I didn't expect all this when I came in, but it seems to me the Case is over now. Barring these moral consequences of yours, it practically ended when I gave in our verdict yesterday."

"I hope you're right," I replied. "I thought so myself a few days ago, though, and that evening a Police Inspector marched in."

He stopped at the door and spoke over his shoulder.

"Oh? You seem doubtful. Any reason?"

"None," I replied. "Only what women call a sort of feeling about it."

Mackwith laughed.

"We'll see about that when it comes," he said. "So long——"