The inquest was already over. Mr. Wilkes had been present, and had taken with him a physician whom he was aware that Graham Patterson had consulted. He testified that Mr. Patterson was suffering from a malady which would certainly have grown more painful as time went on, and was probably incurable. This statement, since it supplied the motive, caused the inquiry to assume briefer limits than it might have done; the obvious inference was that the knowledge of his parlous state had prompted Graham Patterson to take his fate into his own hands. Nothing could have been clearer to such men of the world as the coroner and his jury. All else that was said and done was mere formality. The doctor who had conducted the autopsy, Mr. Andrews, a police officer connected with the railway company, the guard of the train--all these gave formal evidence. The latter said that he had seen the deceased man come running down the platform at Brighton station just as the train was about to start; that he had noticed him getting into a carriage; that he recognised him when, at East Croydon, his attention had been called to him by the ticket collector, who, going to collect his ticket, found him sitting up in the corner of the carriage, dead. In view of the physician's evidence, the whole affair was so transparently simple that no one thought of asking if anyone was in the compartment when he entered it at Brighton station. One of the jury did inquire if the train stopped between Brighton and East Croydon. When he was informed that it did not, it was generally felt that there was nothing more to be said. The hackneyed verdict was recorded as a matter of course--suicide while temporarily insane.
The whole affair struck Rodney, when he learnt all the particulars from Andrews, as distinctly droll. He realised that he owed Mr. Wilkes a debt of gratitude of which that gentleman had no notion. The physician had been an unknown quantity; Rodney, who, through devious channels, had heard of a good many things, had never heard of him. Had not the lawyer brought him on to the scene the situation might easily have become very much more difficult--for him. He would not be so hard on Stephen Wilkes as he had meant to be, but in his treatment of him would recognise that, as Parmiter had put it, he was an able man.