as laid on in all three
rooms. For what purpose, then, were they used, and in such considerable
quantities? I subsequently obtained some of the same brand--Price's
stearine candles, six to the pound--and experimented with them. Each
candle was seven and a quarter inches in length, not counting the cone
at the top, and I found that they burned in still air at the rate of a
fraction over one inch in an hour. We may say that one of these candles
would burn in still air a little over six hours. It would thus be
possible for the person who inhabited these rooms to go away at seven
o'clock in the evening and leave a light which would burn until past one
in the morning and then extinguish itself. This, of course, was only
surmise, but it destroyed the significance of the night porter's
statement.

"But, if the person who inhabited these chambers was not Jeffrey, who
was he?

"The answer to that question seemed plain enough. There was only one
person who had a strong motive for perpetrating a fraud of this kind,
and there was only one person to whom it was possible. If this person
was not Jeffrey, he must have been very like Jeffrey; sufficiently like
for the body of the one to be mistaken for the body of the other. For
the production of Jeffrey's body was an essential part of the plan and
must have been contemplated from the first. But the only person who
fulfills the conditions is John Blackmore.

"We have learned from Mr. Stephen that John and Jeffrey, though very
different in appearance in later years, were much alike as young men.
But when two brothers who are much alike as young men, become unlike in
later life, we shall find that the unlikeness is produced by superficial
differences and that the essential likeness remains. Thus, in the
present case, Jeffrey was clean shaved, had bad eyesight, wore
spectacles and stooped as he walked; John wore a beard and moustache,
had good eyesight, did not wear spectacles and had a brisk gait and
upright carriage. But supposing John to shave off his beard and
moustache, to put on spectacles and to stoop in his walk, these
conspicuous but superficial differences would vanish and the original
likeness reappear.

"There is another consideration. John had been an actor and was an actor
of some experience. Now, any person can, with some care and practice,
make up a disguise; the great difficulty is to support that disguise by
a suitable manner and voice. But to an experienced actor th