With this he entered the room, closely followed by Miller, who, as he crossed the threshold, set at naught Polton’s instructions by exclaiming in a startled voice: “Snakes!”
I followed quickly, all agog with curiosity, but whatever I had expected to see—if I had expected anything—I was totally unprepared for what I did see.
The room was a smallish room, completely bare and empty of furniture save for four chairs—on two of which Polton firmly seated us; and in the middle of the floor, raised on a pair of trestles, was a coffin covered with a black linen cloth. At this gruesome object Miller and I gazed in speechless astonishment, but, apart from Polton’s injunction, there was no opportunity for an exchange of sentiments; for we had hardly taken our seats when we heard the sound of ascending footsteps mingled with Thorndyke’s bland and persuasive accents. A few moments later the party reached the door; and as the two ladies came in sight of the coffin, both started back with a cry of alarm.
“Oh, dear!” exclaimed Miss Dewsnep, “it’s a dead person! Who is it, sir? Is it anyone we know?”
“That is what we want you to tell us,” Thorndyke replied.
“How mysterious!” exclaimed Miss Bonington, in a hushed voice. “How dreadful! Some poor creature who has been found dead, I suppose? I hope it won’t be very—er—you know what I mean, sir—when the coffin is opened.”
“There will be no need to open the coffin,” Thorndyke reassured her. “There is an inspection window in the coffin-lid through which you can see the face. All you have to do is to look through the window and tell us if the face that you see is the face of anyone who is known to you. Are you ready, Polton?”
Polton replied that he was, having taken up his position at the head of the coffin with an air of profound gravity, approaching to gloom. The two ladies shuddered audibly, but their nervousness being now overcome by a devouring curiosity, they advanced, one on either side of the coffin, and, taking up a position close to Polton, gazed eagerly at the covered coffin. There was a solemn pause as Polton carefully gathered up the two corners of the linen pall. Then, with a quick movement, he threw it back. The two witnesses simultaneously stooped and peered in at the window. Simultaneously their mouths opened, and they sprang back with a shriek.
“Why, it’s Mr. Bendelow!”
“You are quite sure it is Mr. Bendelow?” Thorndyke asked.
“Perfectly,” replied Miss Dewsnep. “And yet,” she continued with a mystified look, “it can’t be; for I saw him passed through the bronze doors into the cremation furnace. I saw him with my own eyes,” she added, somewhat unnecessarily. “And what’s more, I saw his ashes in the casket.”
She gazed with wide-open eyes at Thorndyke, and then at her friend, and the two women tiptoed forward and once more stared in at the window with starting eyes and dropped chins.
“It is Mr. Bendelow,” said Miss Bonington, in an awestricken voice.
“But it can’t be,” Miss Dewsnep protested in tremulous tones. “You saw him put through those doors yourself, Susan, and you saw his ashes afterwards.”
“I can’t help that, Sarah,” the other lady retorted. “This is Mr. Bendelow. You can’t deny that it is.”
“Our eyes must be deceived,” said Miss Dewsnep, the said eyes being still riveted on the face within the window. “It can’t be—and yet it is—but yet it is impossible—”
She paused suddenly, and raised a distinctly alarmed face to her friend.
“Susan,” she said, in a low, rather shaky voice, “there is something here with which we, as Christian women, are better not concerned. Something against nature. The dead has been recalled from a burning fiery furnace by some means which we may not inquire into. It were better, Susan, that we should now depart from this place.”
This was evidently Susan’s opinion, too, for she assented with uncommon alacrity and with a distinctly uncomfortable air; and the pair moved with one accord towards the door. But Thorndyke gently detained them.
“Do we understand,” he asked, “that, apart from the apparently impossible circumstances, the body in that coffin is, in your opinion, the body of the late Simon Bendelow?”
“You do,” Miss Dewsnep replied in a resentfully nervous tone and regarding Thorndyke with very evident alarm. “If it were possible that it could be, I would swear that those unnatural remains were those of my poor friend, Mr. Bendelow. As it’s not possible, it cannot be.”
“Thank you,” said Thorndyke with the most extreme suavity of manner. “You have done us a great service by coming here today, and a great service to humanity—how great a service you will learn later. I am afraid it has been a disagreeable experience to both of you, for which I am sincerely sorry; but you must let me assure you that there is nothing unlawful or supernatural in what you have seen. Later, I hope you will be able to realize that. And now I trust that you will allow Mr. Polton to accompany you to the dining-room and offer you a little refreshment.”
As neither of the ladies raised any objection to this programme, we all took our leave of them, and they departed down the stairs, escorted by Polton. When they had gone, Miller stepped across to the coffin and cast a curious glance in at the window.
“So that is Mr. Bendelow,” said he. “I don’t think much of him, and I don’t see how he is going to help us. But you have given those two old girls a rare shakeup, and I don’t wonder. Of course, this can’t be a dead body that you have got in this coffin, but it is a most lifelike representation of one, and it took in those poor old Judies properly. What have you got to tell us about this affair, Doctor? I can see that your scheme, whatever it was, has come off. They always do. But
