"You haven't? What are you staring for? Have to be an inquest, won't there? Can't give the certificate without it, can I?" snapped the little man; and then, lowering his voice out of respect for the dead: "You and your long-legged friend over there, who looks as if he'd be the better for a nip of sal volatile, you'll have to give evidence. Any one would think you'd never heard of an inquest before!"
"Of course. I was an ass not to think of it, but you see it's awkward for me, with the house full of people. However, that can't be helped. I'll telephone at once. Yes, what is it?"
Mrs. Trent's maid, at the door, had a very grave face.
"Can the doctor please come at once, sir? My mistress is taken ill."
The two men were left alone. Denis, who had been standing at the open window all this time, with his back to the room, turned round now to see Gardiner on his knees, hunting over the floor. "What are you doing?" he asked, breaking his long silence.
"Looking for my chisel. I don't think I'll leave that for the police to find."
The little doctor's jibe about sal volatile had not been baseless. Denis, though in his youth he had been through a frontier campaign which should have cured him of such weakness, looked and felt rather sick. Gardiner was less sensitive. He pursued his search without qualms. Denis watched him.
"What are you goin' to say to the police when they do come?"
"What you said to Mrs. Trent. You began it, Denis."
"You'll have to give evidence on oath at the inquest."
"That won't trouble my conscience."
"I suppose they'll call me as well."
"Safe to," assented Gardiner. Denis said nothing. The younger man, looking up, asked with a certain hardihood: "Are you going to give me away?"
"I won't if I can help it."
"By which you mean--?"
"If I'm asked right out, Did you throw the chisel at him? I'll have to say Yes; but short of that I'll do all I can to get you out of the scrape. I'd have been in it myself if I'd been standin' where you were."
"Only you'd have owned up at once, whereas I'm not going to," said Gardiner, with a short laugh. "I might have known you couldn't tell a lie, Denis. Here, I can't find this confounded thing. Where the devil can it have got to?"
Denis, putting his qualms in his pocket, went down on his knees and joined in the search. They looked all over the room, in every corner."I should say it must be underneath him," said Gardiner, with a reflective glance at the body, "but I don't know that I exactly want to look and see." Denis with an uncontrollable shudder got up and retreated to the window. "How can you talk like this? You make me sick!"

"My good Denis, I don't feel like a murderer before the corpse of his victim, if that's what you're driving at! I deny that I was in the 

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