rson to find it
was the one who dropped it. And the person who discovered it was Mr.
Jellicoe.

"Following up this hint, if we ask ourselves what motive Mr. Jellicoe
could have had for dropping it--assuming him to be the murderer--the
answer is obvious. It would not be his policy to fix the crime on any
particular person, but rather to set up a complication of conflicting
evidence which would occupy the attention of investigators and divert
it from himself.

"Of course, if Hurst had been the murderer, he would have had a
sufficient motive for dropping the scarab, so that the case against Mr.
Jellicoe was not conclusive; but the fact that it was he who found it
was highly significant.

"This completes the analysis of the evidence contained in the original
newspaper report describing the circumstances of the disappearance.
The conclusions that followed from it were, as you will have seen:

"1. That the missing man was almost certainly dead, as proved by the
finding of the scarab after his disappearance.

"2. That he had probably been murdered by one or more of four persons,
as proved by the finding of the scarab on the premises occupied by two
of them and accessible to the others.

"3. That, of those four persons, one--Mr. Jellicoe--was the last person
who was known to have been in the company of the missing man; had had
an exceptional opportunity for committing the murder; and was known to
have delivered a dead body to the Museum subsequently to the
disappearance.

"4. That the supposition that Mr. Jellicoe had committed the murder
rendered all the other circumstances of the disappearance clearly
intelligible, whereas on any other supposition they were quite
inexplicable."

"The evidence of the newspaper report, therefore, clearly pointed to
the probability that John Bellingham had been murdered by Mr. Jellicoe
and his body concealed in the mummy-case.

"I do not wish to give you the impression that I, then and there,
believed that Mr. Jellicoe was the murderer. I did not. There was no
reason to suppose that the report contained all the essential facts,
and I merely considered it speculatively as a study in probabilities.
But I did decide that that was the only probable conclusion from the
facts that were given.

"Nearly two years had passed before I heard anything more of the case.
Then it was brought to my notice by my friend, Doctor Berkeley, and I
became acquainted with certain new facts, which