His suppressed whistle was the first sign that the men had reached the coffin. Soon they were lifting the great oak box to the surface, where they gently laid it on the grass beside the open grave. Now…now…Henry told himself that he was on the point of unthinkable revelations. But when it came to the crucial moment of unscrewing and removing the lid he found himself unable to look. He looked away into the dimness of the distance, and listened to the remarks of the others.

“Well, doctor?” he heard Shelley ask.

The doctor murmured something, the exact meaning of which Henry did not catch, and then he said: “Looks quite normal to me, I must say, Shelley. Certainly no arsenic or anything like that, though I imagine that you weren’t really expecting anything of that kind.”

Shelley laughed gently. “As a matter of fact, doctor, I wasn’t. I suppose, though, that you won’t be able to say anything until after the p.-m.”

“No.” The doctor was quite emphatic on that point. “It looks an unpleasant sort of job, and it will probably be a pretty long one. Shall we say about midday tomorrow? After all, you’ve got your man under lock and key, haven’t you?”

“Ye-es.” Shelley did not seem to be any too certain. “I certainly hope so. And in any case, if this is to be, as you say, a longish job, there’s no point in my trying to hurry you over it. The only result of that would be to make you miss something important—and in a murder case we can’t afford to run any risk of that.”

So back they went to Scotland Yard, where Shelley shook Henry warmly by the hand, and bade him a cheerful “Good night.”

“What about the result of the post-mortem?” asked Henry anxiously.

“What about it?” returned Shelley.

“Am I to be told what happens?”

“I am making no rash promises,” answered Shelley with a smile. “Still, if you call around sometime tomorrow afternoon, I will do my best to satisfy your curiosity, Mr. Fairhurst. I have little doubt of what the result will be. But we shall see.”

And with that Henry had to be content, though he felt that the complete absence of results made a strange anti-climax to an evening of the most outrageous excitement. But there was an even deeper depth of anti-climax to be reached, for when he reached Streatham again he had to concoct a purely fictitious account of his evening’s employment to satisfy his sister’s questionings. And Sarah had an awkward habit of asking almost unanswerable questions, and of sniffing unbelievingly when a reasonably good lie was concocted on the spur of the moment in reply to them.

Shelley was excited the next day when Dr. Maguire came around to Scotland Yard to report on the post-mortem examination of Professor Wilkinson.