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"That is a griht," said Jervis; "But it is perfectly true There is no evidence that thedead in the house at the very time of the search"

"But even so," said I, "there was the body to be disposed of soot rid of the body without being observed?"

"Ah!" said Thorndyke, "noe are touching on a point of crucial importance If anyone should ever write a treatise on the art of murder--not an exhibition of literary fireworks like De Quincey's, but a genuine working treatise--he ht leave all other technical details to take care of themselves if he could describe so of the body That is, and always has been, the great stuet rid of the body The hu his pipe, just as, in the days of ard the black-board chalk, "is a very remarkable object It presents a coularly difficult to conceal permanently It is bulky and of an aard shape, it is heavy, it is completely incombustible, it is chereat voluases, and it nevertheless contains identifiable structures of the highest degree of pered, and it is still more difficult completely to destroy The essential permanence of the huene Ara instance is that of Seqenen-Ra the Third, one of the last kings of the seventeenth Egyptian dynasty Here, after a lapse of some four thousand years, it has been possible to determine, not only the cause of death and thefell, the nature of the weapon hich the fatal wound was inflicted, and even the position of the assailant And the permanence of the body under other conditions is admirably shown in the case of Doctor Parkman, of Boston, USA, in which identification was actually effected by means of remains collected from the ashes of a furnace"

"Then we may take it," said Jervis, "that the world has not yet seen the last of John Bellinghaard that as almost a certainty," replied Thorndyke "The only question--and a very important one--is as to when the reappearance may take place It may be to-morrow or it may be centuries hence, when all the issues involved have been forgotten"