Page:The Whisper on the Stair by Lyon Mearson (1924).djvu/83

 excuse. He intended no perjury, no violation of his oath. He silenced his conscience by giving the description of a young girl as she should have appeared to the usual, disinterested observer in a public book store who had no business to notice her, anyway, and who—if he did notice her, did so in a simply casual manner that took in nothing of her looks or her appearance and contented itself by noticing merely that she was a person of the opposite sex and that she was young—or of an indeterminate age, as Val testified. Indeterminate was correct, he admitted to himself. He was undetermined as to whether her age was twenty-one or twenty-two—wasn’t that indeterminate?

“I’ll tell the astigmatic universe that’s indeterminate,” he told himself, and having once more won a strategic victory over the still voice of conscience, he smiled blandly at the coroner and the coroner’s jury and hoped he would be able to assist them still further. He intended, let it be said, to bring the murderer of his friend to earth, to hand him over to justice, but he did not intend to do it until matters were so arranged that it could be done without bringing a certain woman into the case. Unhampered by the police, he was sure he would be able to work swiftly and surely, considering the strands of circumstance he held in his hands—but he would not be unhampered by the police if they knew. It was simplest, then, and best, to conceal what he knew from them.

The coroner’s jury brought in the usual verdict in such cases: “Death violent blow  at the hand or hands of person or persons unknown. ”

Val spoke to Sam Peters in the hall. Mat’s out-of-town sister was there, too, and Sam introduced him to her. Val spoke briefly to her, and an arrangement was