“The newspaper reports of your brother’s disappearance, Mr. Bellingham, were remarkably full of detail.  There were even plans of your house and that of Mr. Hurst.  Do you know who supplied the information?”

“No, I don’t,” replied Mr. Bellingham.  “I know that I didn’t.  Some newspaper men came to me for information, but I sent them packing.  So, I understand, did Hurst; and as for Jellicoe, you might as well cross-examine an oyster.”

“Well,” said Thorndyke, “the Press-men have queer methods of getting ‘copy’; but still, someone 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 will 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 favourite 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 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.