"Then when you last saw or heard your uncle he was leaving you in a fit of rage?"
When Janet said this her eyes filled with tears, and I could readily understand how it hurt the tender-hearted young girl to remember that her uncle's last words to her had been uttered in anger. This, however, did not seem to affect the coroner. He went steadily on, with his voice singularly lacking in inflections.
"What did you do after your uncle retired?"
"I sat in the drawing-room and read for an hour or so."
"Then I put out the lights and went to bed."
Janet seemed to think that this ended her examination, and started to return to her seat; but the coroner stopped her.
"Miss Pembroke," he said, "I must ask you a few more questions. Where was your servant?"
"She had gone to bed some time earlier--about nine o'clock, I should say."
"So that after your uncle left you you were alone?"
"And when you went to bed you put out the lights for the night?"
"You----" The coroner hesitated for the fraction of a second, and then cleared his throat and went on: "You put the night-chain on the front door?"
"Yes." Janet spoke as if the matter were of no importance.
"Then--pardon me, Miss Pembroke--but if you put the chain on last night, at eleven, and Charlotte took it off this morning, at eight, how was it possible for a marauder to enter, as the inspector tells me he finds all the windows fastened, except those which Charlotte says she opened herself this morning?"
"I don't know," said Janet, the dazed look returning to her pale face, and then, sinking to the floor, she again swooned away.
The implication was awful, monstrous, and yet--there it was. Since, as Janet said, she put the chain on, and since it had been found still on by Charlotte in the morning, certainly no one could have entered the apartment during the night by that door. And as the apartment was the duplicate of our own, I knew there was no other door. There was no rear entrance, and the dumb-waiter closed with a snap lock on the kitchen side.
The inspector stated that the windows had evidently been securely fastened through the night. Those in the sleeping-rooms, which were partly opened for ventilation, were secured by a burglar-proof device, which fastened them at any desired point, leaving ample room for air, but far too small a space for a human being to pass through. Thus the possibility of an intruder was eliminated, and, granting that, who had killed Mr. Pembroke?