Page:Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes - The Lodger.djvu/217

Rh focused her gaze on another unfamiliar sight. Specially prominent, running indeed through the whole length of the shut-in space, that is, from the coroner’s high dais right across to the opening in the wooden barrier, was an ink-splashed table at which, when she had first taken her place, there had been sitting three men busily sketching; but now every seat at the table was occupied by tired, intelligent-looking men, each with a notebook, or with some loose sheets of paper, before him.

"Them’s the reporters," whispered her friend. "They don’t like coming till the last minute, for they has to be the last to go. At an ordinary inquest there are only two—maybe three—attending, but now every paper in the kingdom has pretty well applied for a pass to that reporters’ table."

He looked consideringly down into the well of the court. "Now let me see what I can do for you"

Then he beckoned to the coroner’s officer: "Perhaps you could put this lady just over there, in a corner by herself? Related to a relation of the deceased, but doesn’t want to be" He whispered a word or two, and the other nodded sympathetically, and looked at Mrs. Bunting with interest. "I’ll put her just here," he muttered. "There’s no one coming there to-day. You see, there are only seven witnesses—sometimes we have a lot more than that."

And he kindly put her on a now empty bench opposite to where the seven witnesses stood and sat with their eager, set faces, ready—aye, more than ready—to play their part.

For a moment every eye in the court was focused on