I have spoken of the coroner. As fortune would have it, he was no
stranger to me. I had not only seen him before, but had held frequent
conversation with him; in fact, knew him. His name was Hammond, and he
was universally regarded as a man of more than ordinary acuteness,
fully capable of conducting an important examination, with the
necessary skill and address. Interested as I was, or rather was likely
to be, in this particular inquiry, I could not but congratulate myself
upon our good fortune in having so intelligent a coroner.

As for his jurymen, they were, as I have intimated, very much like
all other bodies of a similar character. Picked up at random from the
streets, but from such streets as the Fifth and Sixth Avenues, they
presented much the same appearance of average intelligence and
refinement as might be seen in the chance occupants of one of our city
stages. Indeed, I marked but one amongst them all who seemed to take
any interest in the inquiry as an inquiry; all the rest appearing to be
actuated in the fulfilment of their duty by the commoner instincts of
pity and indignation.

Dr. Maynard, the well-known surgeon of Thirty-sixth Street, was the
first witness called. His testimony concerned the nature of the wound
found in the murdered man's head. As some of the facts presented by him
are likely to prove of importance to us in our narrative, I will
proceed to give a synopsis of what he said.

Prefacing his remarks with some account of himself, and the manner
in which he had been summoned to the house by one of the servants, he
went on to state that, upon his arrival, he found the deceased lying on
a bed in the second-story front room, with the blood clotted about a
pistol-wound in the back of the head; having evidently been carried