to me to make my duty clear, and when Mr. Flemming heard my story he quite agreed with me.
"Undoubtedly you will be wanted at the inquest. You say no one else was near enough to see what happened?"
"I had the feeling some one was coming up behind me, but I can't be sure—and, anyway, they wouldn't be as near as I was."
The inquest was held. Mr. Flemming made all the arrangements and took me there with him. He seemed to fear that it would be a great ordeal to me, and I had to conceal from him my complete composure.
The deceased had been identified as L. B. Carton. Nothing had been found in his pockets except a house-agent's order to view a house on the river near Marlow. It was in the name of L. B. Carton, Russell Hotel. The bureau clerk from the hotel identified the man as having arrived the day before and booked a room under that name. He had registered as L. B. Carton, Kimberley, S. Africa. He had evidently come straight off the steamer.
I was the only person who had seen anything of the affair.
"You think it was an accident?" the coroner asked me.
"I am positive of it. Something alarmed him, and he stepped backwards blindly without thinking what he was doing."
"But what could have alarmed him?"
"That I don't know. But there was something. He looked panic-stricken."
A stolid juryman suggested that some men were terrified of cats. The man might have seen a cat. I didn't think his suggestion a very brilliant one, but it seemed to pass muster with the jury, who were obviously impatient to get home and only too pleased at being able to give a verdict of accident as opposed to suicide.
