 erect, his hands carelessly clasped behind him, and seemed to await further questioning.
Nor did he wait long. The coroner’s tongue once loosed, his queries came direct and rapid.
Landon’s aplomb seemed suddenly to desert him. “After luncheon,” he began, and paused. He shifted his weight to the other foot; he unclasped his hands and put them in his pockets; he frowned as if in a brown study and finally, his eyes fell on Avice and rested there. The girl was gazing at him with an eager, strained face, and it seemed to arrest his attention to the exclusion of all else.
“Well?” said the coroner, impatiently.
The audience gasped. Was this the honesty of innocence or the bravado of shameless guilt?
Leslie Hoyt looked at Landon curiously. Hoyt was a clever man and quick reader of character, but this young Westerner apparently puzzled him. He seemed to take a liking to him, but reserved decision as to the justification of this attitude. Avice went white and was afraid she was going to faint. To her, the admission sounded like a confession of the crime, and it was too incredible to be believed. And yet, as she remembered Kane, it was like him to tell the truth. In their old play days, he had often told the truth, she remembered, even though to his own disadvantage. And she remembered, too, how he had often escaped with a lighter punishment because he had been frank! Was this his idea? Had he really killed his uncle, and fearing discovery, was he trying to forestall the consequences by admission?
“Yes,” was the reply, but in a voice so low as to be almost inaudible.
The words were spoken lightly, almost flippantly, and seemed to some listeners as if meant to divert attention from the business in hand.
Nobody liked the young man’s manner. It was careless, indifferent, and inattentive. He stood easily, and was in no way embarrassed, but his bravado, whether real or assumed, was distasteful to those who were earnestly trying to discover the facts of the crime that had been committed. There were many who at once leaped to the conclusion that the Swede’s testimony of the victim’s dying words, proved conclusively that the murderer was of a necessity this young man, whose name was Kane, and who so freely admitted his presence near the scene of the tragedy.
The answer was given in a careless, unconcerned way that exasperated the coroner.
“Can you prove that?” he snapped out.
Coroner Berg looked chagrined. He had never met just this sort of a witness before, and did not know quite how to treat him.
And yet Landon was respectful, serious, and polite. Indeed, one might have found it hard to say what was amiss in his attitude, but none could deny there was something. It was after all, an aloofness, a separateness, that seemed to disconnect this man with the proceedings now going on; and which was so, only because the man himself willed it.
Coroner Berg restlessly and only half-consciously sensed this state of things, and gropingly strove to fasten on some facts.
Nor were these hard to find. The facts were clear and startling enough, and were to a legal mind conclusive. There was, so far as known, no eye-witness to the murder, but murderers do not usually play to an audience.
There was a hush over the whole room, as the answer to this arraignment was breathlessly awaited.
The speaker grew more emphatic in voice and gesture as he proceeded, and this did not militate in his favor. Rather, his irritation and vehement manner prejudiced many against him. Had he been cool and collected, his declarations would have met better belief, but his agitated tones sounded like the last effort in a lost cause.
With harrowing pertinacity, the coroner quizzed and pumped the witness as to his every move of the day before. Landon was forced to admit that he had quarreled with his uncle, and left him in a fit of temper, and with a threat to get the money elsewhere.
“And did you get it?” queried the coroner at this point.
The stolid-looking Swede came.
The voice that rang out was that of Fibsy, the irrepressible.
“Ay tank so,” returned the imperturbable Swede.
“There!” shouted Fibsy, triumphantly; “now, wait a minute, Mr. Berg,” and by the force of his own insistence Fibsy held the audience, while he pursued his own course. He drew a silver quarter from his pocket and handed it to Sandstrom. “Look at that,” he cried, “look at it good!” He snatched it back. “Did you look at it good?” and he shook his fist in the other’s face.
The Swede thought deeply.
Nor was there. Berg looked mystified. “What’s it all about?” he said, helplessly.
The boy had scored. So far as the Swede’s alleged recognition of Landon was evidence, it was discarded at once. Coroner Berg looked at the boy in perplexity, not realizing just how the incident of the silver quarter had come about. It was by no means his intention to allow freckle-faced office boys to interfere with his legal proceedings. He had read in a book about mal-observation and the rarity of truly remembered evidence, but he had not understood it clearly and it was only a vague idea to him. So it nettled him to have the principle put to a practical use by an impertinent urchin, who talked objectionable slang.
Judge Hoyt looked at Fibsy with growing interest. That boy had brains, he concluded, and might be more worth-while than his appearance indicated. Avice, too, took note of the bright-eyed chap, and Kane Landon, himself, smiled in open approval.
But Fibsy was in no way elated, or even conscious that he had attracted attention. He had acted on impulse; he had disbelieved the Swede’s evidence, and he had sought to disprove it by a simple experiment, which worked successfully. His assertion that the Swede had been told to say that he recognized Landon, was somewhat a chance shot.
Fibsy reasoned it out, that if Sandstrom had seen Landon in the woods, he would have recognized him sooner at the inquest, or might even have told of him before his appearance. And he knew that the police now suspected Landon, and as they were eager to make an arrest, they had persuaded the Swede that he had seen the man.  Whether guilty or innocent, he had come to the scene at his wife’s orders, and might he not equally well have testified at the orders or hints of the police? At any rate, he had admitted that he had been told to say what he had said, and so he had been disqualified as a witness.
And yet, it all proved nothing, rather it left them with no definite proof of any sort. Fibsy ignored the stupid-looking Swede, and stared at the coroner, until that dignitary became a little embarrassed. Realizing that he had lessened his own importance to a degree, Berg strove to regain lost ground.
“I cannot allow this child’s play,” and Mr. Berg looked decidedly angry.
“Yessir,” and Fibsy darted forward.
The coroner snapped his watch open, and after a brief glance, the boy gave a quick little wag of his head, and went back to his seat without a word.
But the man flushed a fiery red, and his pompous air deserted him.
“A very natural error,” mumbled the coroner, and then Detective Groot pounced on him, demanding to see his watch.
“This tomfoolery must be stopped,” began the coroner, but he had to pause in his speech until the ripple of merriment had subsided and the jury had realized afresh the seriousness of their purpose.
Again Hoyt gave the boy a look of appreciation. “Keen-witted,” he said to himself. “Ought to make his mark.” And then he glanced back to the discomfited coroner.
Now Mr. Berg’s disposition was of the sort that when offended, desires to take it out of some one else rather than to retaliate on the offender. So, after a little further questioning of the still bewildered Swede he turned again to Landon.
The statement was made carelessly, as most of Kane Landon’s statements were, and he seemed all unaware of the conclusions immediately drawn from his words.
“Most certainly, as I drew up the document,” was the answer.
It was impossible not to note the gleam of satisfaction that came into Landon’s eyes at this news. Hoyt gave him a stare of utter scorn and Avice looked amazed and grieved.
“You seem pleased at the information, Mr. Landon,” the coroner observed.
Landon favored him with a calm, indifferent glance and made no response.
Berg turned again to Miss Wilkinson, the blonde stenographer.
The girl hesitated. She shot a quick glance at Landon, and then looked down again. She fidgeted with her handkerchief, and twice essayed to speak, but did not finish.
“I don’t know,” said Miss Wilkinson at last.