consider the conditions. John Bellingham was known to be setting
out alone upon a journey beyond the sea. His exact destination was not
stated. He was to be absent for an undetermined period, but at least
three weeks. His disappearance would occasion no comment; his absence
would lead to no inquiries, at least for several weeks, during which
the murderer would have leisure quietly to dispose of the body and
conceal all traces of the crime. The conditions were, from a
murderer's point of view, ideal.

"But that was not all. During that very period of John Bellingham's
absence Mr. Jellicoe was engaged to deliver to the British Museum what
was admittedly a dead human body; and that body was to be enclosed in a
sealed case. Could any more perfect or secure method of disposing of a
body be devised by the most ingenious murderer? The plan would have
had only one weak point: the mummy would be known to have left Queen
Square _after_ the disappearance of John Bellingham, and suspicion
might in the end have arisen. To this point I shall return presently;
meanwhile we will consider the second hypothesis--that the missing man
was made away with by Mr. Hurst.

"Now, there seemed to be no doubt that some person, purporting to be
John Bellingham, did actually visit Mr. Hurst's house; and he must
either have left the house or remained in it. If he left, he did so
surreptitiously; if he remained, there could be no reasonable doubt
that he had been murdered and that his body had been concealed. Let us
consider the probabilities in each case.

"Assuming--as every one seems to have done--that the visitor was really
John Bellingham, we are dealing with a responsible, middle-aged
gentleman, and the idea that such a person would enter a house,
announce his intention of staying, and then steal away unobserved is
very difficult to accept. Moreover, he would appear to have come down
to Eltham by rail immediately on landing in England, leaving his
luggage in the cloakroom at Charing Cross. This pointed to a
definiteness of purpose quite inconsistent with his casual
disappearance from the house.

"On the other hand, the idea that he might have been murdered by Hurst
was not inconceivable. The thing was physically possible. If
Bellingham had really been in the study when Hurst came home, the
murder could have been committed--by appropriate means--and the body
temporarily concealed in the cupboard or elsewhere. But although
pos