Jervis filled his pipe with deliberate care and lighted it.  Then, blowing a slender stream of smoke into the air, he said: 

“If you want to know what I make of the case from that report, I can tell you in one word—­nothing.  Every road seems to end in a cul-de-sac.”

“Oh, come!” said Thorndyke, “this is mere laziness.  Berkeley wants to witness a display of your forensic wisdom.  A learned counsel may be in a fog—­he very often is—­but he doesn’t state the fact baldly; he wraps it up in a decent verbal disguise.  Tell us how you arrive at your conclusion.  Show us that you have really weighed the facts.”

“Very well,” said Jervis, “I will give you a masterly analysis of the case—­leading to nothing.”  He continued to puff at his pipe for a time with slight embarrassment, as I thought—­and I fully sympathised with him.  Finally he blew a little cloud and commenced: 

“The position appears to be this:  Here is a man who is seen to enter a certain house, who is shown into a certain room and shut in.  He is not seen to come out, and yet, when the room is next entered, it is found to be empty; and that man is never seen again, alive or dead.  That is a pretty tough beginning.

“Now, it is evident that one of three things must have happened.  Either he must have remained in that room, or at least in that house, alive; or he must have died, naturally or otherwise, and his body have been concealed; or he must have left the house unobserved.  Let us take the first case.  This affair happened nearly two years ago.  Now, he couldn’t have remained alive in the house for two years.  He would have been noticed.  The servants, for instance, when cleaning out the rooms, would have observed him.”

Here Thorndyke interposed with an indulgent smile at his junior:  “My learned friend is treating the inquiry with unbecoming levity.  We accept the conclusion that the man did not remain in the house alive.”

“Very well.  Then did he remain in it dead?  Apparently not.  The report says that as soon as the man was missed, Hurst and the servants together searched the house thoroughly.  But there had been no time or opportunity to dispose of the body, whence the only possible conclusion is that the body was not there.  Moreover, if we admit the possibility of his having been murdered—­for that is what concealment of the body would imply—­there is the question:  Who could have murdered him?  Not the servants, obviously, and as to Hurst—­well, of course, we don’t know what his relations with the missing man have been—­at least, I don’t.”

“Neither do I,” said Thorndyke.  “I know nothing beyond what is in the newspaper report and what Berkeley has told us.”