ground, church, chapel or other authorised place for
the reception of the bodies of the dead situate within or appertaining
to the parishes of St. Andrew above the Bars and St. George the Martyr
or St. George Bloomsbury and St. Giles in the Fields. But if the
conditions in this clause be not carried out then

"3. I give and devise the said residue of my estate and effects unto my
cousin George Hurst aforesaid and I hereby revoke all wills and codicils
made by me at any time heretofore and I appoint Arthur Jellicoe
aforesaid to be the executor of this my will jointly with the principal
beneficiary and residuary legatee that is to say with the aforesaid
Godfrey Bellingham if the conditions set forth hereinbefore in clause 2
shall be duly carried out but with the aforesaid George Hurst if the
said conditions in the said clause 2 be not carried out.

"JOHN BELLINGHAM.

"Signed by the said testator John Bellingham in the presence of us
present at the same time who at his request and in his presence and in
the presence of each other have subscribed our names as witnesses.

"Frederick Wilton, 16 Medford Road, London, N., clerk.

"James Barker, 32 Wadbury Crescent, London, S.W., clerk."

"Well," said Jervis, laying down the document as Thorndyke detached the
last sheet from his writing-pad, "I have met with a good many idiotic
wills, but this one can give them all points. I don't see how it is ever
going to be administered. One of the two executors is a mere
abstraction--a sort of algebraical problem with no answer."

"I think that difficulty could be overcome," said Thorndyke.

"I don't see how," retorted Jervis. "If the body is deposited in a
certain place, A is the executor; if it is somewhere else, B is the
executor. But, as you cannot produce the body, and no one has the least
idea where it is, it is impossible to prove either that it is or that it
is not in any specified place."

"You are magnifying the difficulty, Jervis," said Thorndyke. "The body
may, of course, be anywhere in the entire world, but the place where it
is lying is either inside or outside the general boundary of these two
parishes. If it has been deposited within the boundary of those two
parishes, the fact must be ascertainable by examining the burial
certificates issued since the date when the missing man was last seen
alive and by consulting the registers of those specified places of
burial. I think that if no record can be found of any such