“Then I give it up,” said Godfrey, and lay back in his chair.

There was a queer boiling of ideas in my mind; ideas difficult to clothe with words, and composed of I know not what farrago of occultism, mysticism, and Oriental magic; but at last I managed to simmer them down to a timid question: 

“I know it sounds foolish, but wouldn’t it be possible, Godfrey, to explain all this by hypnosis, or occult influence, or something of that sort?”

Godfrey turned and looked at me.

“Silva seems to have impressed you,” he said.

“He has.  But isn’t such an explanation possible?”

“I don’t think so.  I don’t deny that the Orientals have gone farther along certain paths of psychology than we have, but as to their possessing any occult power, it is, in my opinion, all bosh.  As for hypnosis, the best authorities agree that no man can be hypnotised to do a thing which, in his normal condition, would be profoundly repugnant to him.  Indeed, few men can be hypnotised against their will.  To be hypnotised, you have to yield yourself.  Of course, the more you yield yourself, the weaker you grow, but that doesn’t apply to Swain.  I shouldn’t advise you to use that line of argument to a jury,” he added, with a smile.  “You’d better just leave the whole thing up in the air.”

“Well,” I said, “I’ll make the best fight I can.  I was hoping Swain could help me; since he can’t, we’ll have to trust to luck.”

Godfrey left us to get his story of the morning hearing into shape, and I fell into a gloomy revery.  I could see no way out of the maze; either Swain had touched Vaughan’s body, or it had been touched by another man with the same finger-markings.  I sat suddenly upright, for if there was such a man, he must be one of two....

“What is it?” Swain asked, looking at me.

“A long shot,” I said.  “An exceedingly long shot—­a three-hundred-million to one shot.  How many people are there in the world, Swain?”

“I’m sure I don’t know,” and he stared at me in bewilderment.

“I think it’s something like a billion and a half.  If that is true, then it’s possible that there are four people in the world, beside yourself, with the thumb and two fingers of the right hand marked exactly as yours are.”

“We must have a reunion, some day,” Swain remarked, with irony.

But I refused to be diverted.

“Allowing for imperceptible differences,” I went on, “I think it is safe to assume that there are ten such people.”

“Well,” said Swain, bitterly, “I know one thing that it isn’t safe to assume, and that is that either of those Hindus is one of those ten.  I suppose that is the assumption you will make next?”

“It’s an assumption I intend to put to the proof, anyway,” I answered, somewhat testily, “and if it fails, I’m afraid you’ll have to go to jail till I can dig up some more evidence.”