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"After a hasty meal Mr Hurst returned to town and called at the office of Mr Bellinghaent, a Mr Jellicoe, andof his client's return from Paris, and the twoham, lives The servant who admitted thehter was in the library, which is a detached building situated in a shrubbery beyond the garden at the back of the house Here the two haate
"Mr Godfrey and his daughter listened to Mr Hurst's story with the greatest surprise, and assured hi of John Bellingham
"Presently the party left the library to walk up to the house; but only a few feet fro in the grass and pointed it out to Mr Godfrey
"The latter picked it up, and they all recognised it as a scarab which Mr John Bellingham had been accustomed to wear suspended fro it It was a very fine scarab of the eighteenth dynasty fashioned of lapis lazuli and engraved with the cartouche of A fastened to a hich passed through the suspension hole, and the ring, though broken, was still in position
"This discovery, of course, only added to the mystery, which was still further increased when, on inquiry, a suit-case bearing the initials JB was found to be lying unclai Cross Reference to the counterfoil of the ticket-book showed that it had been deposited about the time of arrival of the Continental express on the twenty-third of Noveht on to Eltham
"That is how the affair stands at present, and, should theman never reappear or should his body never be found, the question, as you see, which will be required to be settled is, 'What is the exact time and place, when and where, he was last known to be alive?' As to the place, the importance of the issues involved in that question are obvious and we need not consider thenificance Cases have occurred, as I pointed out in the lecture, in which proof of survivorship by less than aman was last seen alive at Mr Hurst's house at twenty minutes past five on the twenty-third of November But he appears to have visited his brother's house at Woodford, and, since nobody saw him at that house, it is at present uncertain whether he went there before or after calling on Mr Hurst If he went there first, then twentyof the twenty-third is the latest moment at which he is known to have been alive; but if he went there after, there would have to be added to this time the shortest possible time in which he could travel from the one house to the other