"It is difficult," replied Thorndyke, "to avoid that assumption, though we must be on our guard against coincidences; but the man whom you saw agreed with the description that has been given to us, we know that Reinhardt was in the neighbourhood on that day, and you found the reliquary on the following morning in the immediate vicinity. We seem to be committed to the hypothesis that the man was Reinhardt unless we can prove that he was someone else, or that Reinhardt was in some other place at the time; which at present we cannot."
"Then," said I, "in that case, the bobby must have been right, after all. The man couldn't have been dead, seeing that he called on Marchmont the following day and was afterwards traced to Paris. But I must say that he looked as dead as Queen Anne. It just shows how careful one ought to be in giving opinions."
"Some authority has said," remarked Jervis," that the only conclusive proof of death is decomposition. I believe it was old Taylor who said so, and I am inclined to think that he wasn't far wrong."
"But," said Thorndyke, "assuming that the man whom you saw was Reinhardt, and that he was not dead how do you explain the other circumstances? Was he insensible from the effects of injury or drugs? Or was he deliberately shamming insensibility? Was it he who passed over the fence? and if so, did he climb over unassisted or was he helped over? And what answers do you suggest to the questions that Marchmont propounded? You answer his first question: 'Is Reinhardt alive?' in the affirmative. What about the others?"
"As to where he is," I replied. "I can only say, the Lord knows; probably skulking somewhere on the Continent. As to his state of mind, the facts seem to suggest that, in vulgar parlance, he has gone off his onion. He must be as mad as a hatter to have behaved in the way that he has. For, even assuming that he wanted to get clear of the Poor Brothers of Saint Jeremiah Diddler without explicitly saying so, he adopted a fool's plan. There is no sense in masquerading as a corpse one day and turning up smiling at your lawyer's office the next. If he meant to be dead, he should have stuck to it and remained dead."
"The objection to that," said Jervis," is that Marchmont would have proceeded to get permission to presume death and administer the will."
"I see. Then I can only suppose that he had got infected by Father Humperdinck and resolved to be artful at all costs and hang the consequences."
"Then," said Thorndyke, "I understand your view to be that Reinhardt is at present hiding somewhere on the Continent and that his mind is more or less affected?"
"Yes. Though as to his being unfit to control his own affairs, I am not so clear. I fancy there was more evidence in that direction when he was forking out the bulk of his income to maintain the poverty of the Poor Brothers. But the truth is, I haven't any opinions on the case at all. I am in a complete fog about the whole affair."
"And no wonder," said Jervis. "One set of facts seems to suggest most strongly that Reinhardt must certainly be dead. Another set of facts seems to prove beyond doubt that he was alive, at least after that affair in Millfield Lane. He may be perpetrating an elephantine practical joke on the Poor Brothers; but that doesn't seem to be particularly probable. The whole case is a tangle of contradictions which one might regard as beyond unravelment if it were not for a single clear and intelligible fact."
"What is that?" I asked.
"That my revered senior has undertaken to furnish a solution in the course of a month; from which I gather that my revered senior has something up his sleeve."
"There is nothing up my sleeve," said Thorndyke, "that might not equally well be up yours. I have made no separate investigations. The actual data which I possess were acquired in the presence of one or both of you, and are now the common property of us all. I am referring, of course, to the original data, not to fresh matter obtained by inference from, or further examination of those data."
Jervis smiled sardonically. "It is the old story," said he. "The magician offers you his hat to inspect. "You observe, ladies and gentlemen, that there is no deception. You can look inside it and examine the lining, and you can also inspect the top of my head. I now put on my hat. I now take it off again and you notice that there is a guinea pig sitting in it. There was no deception, ladies and gentlemen, you had all the data."
Thorndyke laughed and shook his head, "That's all nonsense, Jervis," he said. "It is a false analogy. I have done nothing to divert your attention. The guinea pig has been staring you in the face all the time."
"Very rude of him," murmured Jervis.
"I have even drawn your attention to him once or twice. But, seriously, I don't think that this case is so very obscure, though mind you, it is a mere hypothesis so far as I am concerned, and may break down completely when I come to apply the tests that I have in view. But what I mean is, that the facts known to us suggested a very obvious hypothesis and that the suggestion was offered equally to us all. The verification may fail, but that is another matter."
"Are you going to work at the case immediately?" I asked.
"No," Thorndyke replied. "Jervis and I have to attend at the Maidstone Assizes for the next few days. We are retained on a case which involves some very important issues in relation to life assurance, and that will take up most of our time. So this other affair will have to wait.
"And meanwhile," said Jervis, "you will stay at home like a good boy and mind the shop; and I suppose we shall have to find you something to do, to keep you out of mischief. What do you say to making a longhand transcript of Father Humperdinck's statement?"
"Yes, you had better do that," said Thorndyke; "and attach it to the original shorthand copy. And now we must really turn in or we shall never be ready for our start in the morning."
The transcription of Father Humperdinck's statement gave me abundant occupation for the whole of the following morning. But when that was finished, I was without any definite employment, and, though I was not in the least dull—for I was accustomed to a solitary life—I suppose I was in that state of susceptibility to mischief that is proverbially associated with unemployment. And in these untoward circumstances I was suddenly exposed to a great temptation; and after some feeble efforts at resistance, succumbed ignominiously.
I shall offer no excuses for my conduct nor seek in any way to mitigate the judgment that all discreet persons will pass upon my folly. I make no claims to discretion or to the caution and foresight of a man like Thorndyke. At this time I was an impulsive and rather heedless young man, and my actions were pretty much those which might have been expected from a person of such temperament.
The voice of the tempter issued in the first place from our letter-box, and assumed the sound of the falling of letters thereinto. I hastened to extract the catch, and sorting out the envelopes, selected one, the superscription of which was in Sylvia's now familiar handwriting. It was actually addressed to Dr. Thorndyke, but a private mark, on which we had agreed, exposed that naively pious fraud and gave me the right to open it; which I did, and seated myself in the armchair to enjoy its perusal at my ease.
It was a delightful letter; bright, gossipy and full of frank and intimate friendliness. As I read it, the trim, graceful figure and pretty face of the writer rose before me and made me wonder a little discontentedly how long it would be before I should look on her and hear her voice again. It was now getting into the third week since I had last seen her, and, as the time passed, I was feeling more and more how great a blank in my life the separation from her had caused. Our friendship had grown up in a quiet and unsensational fashion and I suppose I had not realized all that it meant; but I was realizing it now; and, as I conned over her letter, with its little personal notes and familiar turns of expression, I began to be consumed with a desire to see her, to hear her speak, to tell her that she was not as other women to me, and to claim a like special place in her thoughts.
It was towards the end of the letter that the tempter spoke out in clear and unmistakable language, and these were the words that he used, through the medium of the innocent and unconscious Sylvia: "You remember those sketches that you stole for me—' pinched,' I think was your own expression. Well, I have cleaned off the daubs of paint with which they had been disfigured and put them in rough frames in my studio. All but one;