Was it a heavy one?"
"Why, sir," the witness hesitated, "just an ordinary veil, I should
say."
"But still heavy enough to conceal her face?"
"Oh, yes, sir."
The coroner nodded. "Now, Mr. Rogers, how long a time elapsed after
the departure of the woman before you went back into the inner
office?"
"Not more than three or four minutes. I thought perhaps Mr. Holladay
was getting ready to accompany his daughter, and I didn't wish to
detain him."
"And you found him, as you say, lying forward across his desk with a
knife in his throat and the blood spurting out. Did you recognize the
knife?"
"Yes, sir. It was his knife--a knife he kept lying on his desk to
sharpen pencils with and erase and so on."
"Sharp, was it?"
"It had one long blade, very sharp, sir."
The coroner picked up a knife that was lying on the desk before him.
"Is this the knife?" he asked.
Rogers looked at it carefully.
"That's the knife, sir," he said, and it was passed to the jury. When
they had finished with it, Mr. Royce and I examined it. It was an
ordinary one-bladed erasing knife with ivory handle. It was open, the
blade being about two inches and a half in length, and, as I soon
convinced myself, very sharp indeed.
"Will you describe Mr. Holladay's position?" continued the coroner.
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