t still, some one must have given them that description of
your brother and those plans. It would be interesting to know who it
was. However, we don't know; and now let us dismiss these legal
topics, with suitable apologies for having introduced them."

"And perhaps," said I, "we may as well adjourn to what we call the
drawing-room--it is really Barnard's den--and leave the housekeeper to
wrestle with the debris."

We migrated to the cheerfully shabby little apartment, and, when Mrs.
Gummer had served coffee, with gloomy resignation (as who should say:
"If you will drink this sort of stuff I suppose you must, but don't
blame me for the consequences"), I settled Mr. Bellingham in Barnard's
favorite lop-sided easy chair--the depressed seat of which suggested
its customary use by an elephant of sedentary habits--and opened the
diminutive piano.

"I wonder if Miss Bellingham would give us a little music?" I said.

"I wonder if she could?" was the smiling response. "Do you know," she
continued, "I have not touched a piano for nearly two years? It will
be quite an interesting experiment--to me; but if it fails, you will be
the sufferers. So you must choose."

"My verdict," said Mr. Bellingham, "is _fiat experimentum_, though I
won't complete the quotation, as that would seem to disparage Doctor
Barnard's piano. But before you begin, Ruth, there is one rather
disagreeable matter that I want to dispose of, so that I may not
disturb the harmony with it later."

He paused and we all looked at him expectantly.

"I suppose, Doctor Thorndyke," he said, "you read the newspapers?"

"I don't," replied Dr. Thorndyke. "But I ascertain, for purely
business purposes, what they contain."

"Then," said Mr. Bellingham, "you have probably met with some accounts
of the finding of certain human remains, apparently portions of a
mutilated body."

"Yes, I have seen those reports and filed them for future reference."

"Exactly. Well, now, it can hardly be necessary for me to tell you
that those remains--the mutilated remains of some poor murdered
creature, as there can be no doubt they are--have seemed to have a very
dreadful significance for me. You will understand what I mean; and I
want to ask you if--if they have made a similar suggestion to you?"

Thorndyke paused before replying, with his eyes bent thoughtfully on
the floor, and we all looked at him anxiously.

"It's very natural," he said at length, "that you should a