The Abandoned Room

pany them upstairs while he questioned her. In the absence of the coroner he wouldn't let the doctor touch the body. "I must repair this lock," he said, "the first thing, so nothing can be disturbed." Doctor Groom, a grim and dark man, had grown silent on entering the room. For a long time he stared at the body in the candle light, making as much of an examination as he could, evidently, without physical contact. "Why did he ever come here to sleep?" he asked in his rumbling bass voice. "Nasty room! Unhealthy room! Ten to one you're a formality, policeman. Coroner's a formality." He sneered a little. "I daresay he died what the hard-headed world will call a natural death. Wonder what the coroner'll say." The detective didn't answer. He shot rapid, uneasy glances about the room in which a single candle burned. After a time he said with an accent of complete conviction: "That man was murdered."