I unbolted the door, and, opening it, stepped out on the wide threshold and looked up and down the street. Thorndyke was right. The thoroughfare was undoubtedly Field Street, down which we had passed only a few minutes ago, and close by, on the right hand, was the canal bridge. Strongly impressed with the oddity of the affair, I turned to reenter, and as I turned I glanced up at the number on the door. As my eye lighted on it I uttered a cry of astonishment. For the number was fifty-two!
“But this is amazing!” I exclaimed, reentering the hall—where Thorndyke stood watching me with quiet amusement—and shutting the door. “It seems that Usher and I were actually visiting at the same house.”
“Evidently,” said he.
“But it almost looks as if we were visiting the same patient!”
“There can be practically no doubt that you were,” he agreed. “It was on that assumption that I induced Miller to apply for the exhumation order, and the empty coffin seems to confirm it completely.”
I was thunderstruck, not only by the incredible thing that had happened, but by Thorndyke’s uncanny knowledge of all the circumstances.
“Then,” I said, after a pause, “if Usher and I were attending the same man, we were both attending Bendelow.”
“That is certainly what the appearances suggest,” he agreed.
“It was undoubtedly Bendelow who was cremated,” said I.
“All the circumstances seem to point to that conclusion,” he admitted, “unless you can think of any that point in the opposite direction.”
“I cannot,” I replied. “Everything points in the same direction. The dead man was seen and identified as Bendelow by those two ladies, Miss Dewsnep and Miss Bonington, and they not only saw him here, but they actually saw him in his coffin just before it was passed through into the crematorium. And there is no doubt that they knew Bendelow by sight, for you remember that they recognized the photograph of him that the American detective showed them.”
“Yes,” he admitted, “that is so. But their identification is a point that requires further investigation. And it is a vitally important point. I have my own hypothesis as to what took place, but that hypothesis will have to be tested; and that test will be what the logicians would call the Experimentum Crucis. It will settle one way or the other whether my theory of this case is correct. If my hypothesis as to their identification is true, there will be nothing left to investigate. The case will be complete and ready to turn over to Miller.”
I listened to this statement in complete bewilderment. Thorndyke’s reference to “the case” conveyed nothing definite to me. It was all so involved that I had almost lost count of the subject of our investigation.
“When you speak of ‘the case,’ ” said I, “what case are you referring to?”
“My dear Gray!” he protested. “Do you not realize that we are trying to discover who murdered Julius D’Arblay?”
“I thought you were,” I answered; “but I can’t connect this new mystery with his death in any way.”
“Never mind,” said he. “When the case is completed we will have a general elucidation. Meanwhile there is something else that I have to show you before we go. It is through this side door.”
He led me out into a large neglected garden and along a wide path that was all overgrown with weeds. As we went, I tried to collect and arrange my confused ideas, and suddenly a new discrepancy occurred to me. I proceeded to propound it.
“By the way, you are not forgetting that the two alleged deaths were some days apart? I saw Bendelow dead on a Monday. He had died on the preceding afternoon. But Crile’s funeral had already taken place a day or two previously.”
“I see no difficulty in that,” Thorndyke replied. “Crile’s funeral occurred, as I have ascertained, on a Saturday. You saw Bendelow alive for the last time on Thursday morning. Usher was sent for, and saw Crile dead on Thursday evening, he having evidently died—with or without assistance—soon after you left. Of course, the date of death given to you was false; and you mention in your notes of the case that both you and Cropper were surprised at the condition of the body. The previous funeral offers no difficulty, seeing that we know that the coffin was empty. This is what I thought you might be interested to see.”
He pointed to a flight of stone steps, at the bottom of which was a wooden gate set in the wall that enclosed the garden. I looked at the steps—a little vacantly, I am afraid—and inquired what there was about them that I was expected to find of interest.
“Perhaps,” he replied, “you will see better if we open the gate.”
We descended the steps, and he inserted a key into the gate, drawing my attention to the fact that the lock had been oiled at no very distant date and was in quite good condition. Then he threw the gate open, and we both stepped out on to the towpath of the canal. I looked about me in considerable surprise, for we were within a few yards of the hut with the derrick and the little wharf from which I had been flung into the canal.
“I remember this gate,” said I; “in fact, I think I mentioned it to you in my account of my adventure here. But I little imagined that it belonged to the Morris’ house. It would have been a short way in, if I had known. But I expect it was locked at the time.”
“I expect it was,” Thorndyke agreed, and thereupon turned and reentered. We passed once more down the long passage, and came out into Market Street, when Thorndyke locked the door and pocketed the key.
“That is an extraordinary arrangement,” I remarked; “one house having two frontages on separate streets.”
“It is
