I was the only person who had seen anything of the affair.

“You think it was an accident?” the coroner asked me.

“I am positive of it. Something alarmed him, and he stepped backwards blindly without thinking what he was doing.”

“But what could have alarmed him?”

“That I don’t know. But there was something. He looked panic stricken.”

A stolid juryman suggested that some men were terrified of cats. The man might have seen a cat. I didn’t think his suggestion a very brilliant one, but it seemed to pass muster with the jury, who were obviously impatient to get home and only too pleased at being able to give a verdict of accident as opposed to suicide.