ody
under other conditions is admirably shown in the case of Doctor Parkman,
of Boston, U.S.A., in which identification was actually effected by
means of remains collected from the ashes of a furnace."

"Then we may take it," said Jervis, "that the world has not yet seen
the last of John Bellingham."

"I think we may regard that as almost a certainty," replied Thorndyke.
"The only question--and a very important one--is as to when the
reappearance may take place. It may be to-morrow or it may be centuries
hence, when all the issues involved have been forgotten."

"Assuming," said I, "for the sake of argument, that Hurst did murder him
and that the body was concealed in the study at the time the search was
made. How could it have been disposed of? If you had been in Hurst's
place, how would you have gone to work?"

Thorndyke smiled at the bluntness of my question.

"You are asking me for an incriminating statement," said he, "delivered
in the presence of a witness too. But, as a matter of fact, there is no
use in speculating _a priori_; we should have to reconstruct a purely
imaginary situation, the circumstances of which are unknown to us, and
we should almost certainly reconstruct it wrong. What we may fairly
assume is that no reasonable person, no matter how immoral, would find
himself in the position that you suggest. Murder is usually a crime of
impulse, and the murderer a person of feeble self-control. Such persons
are most unlikely to make elaborate and ingenious arrangements for the
disposal of the bodies of their victims. Even the cold-blooded
perpetrators of the most carefully planned murders appear, as I have
said, to break down at this point. The almost insuperable difficulty of
getting rid of a human body is not appreciated until the murderer
suddenly finds himself face to face with it.

"In the case that you are suggesting, the choice would seem to lie
between burial on the premises or dismemberment and dispersal of the
fragments; and either method would be pretty certain to lead to
discovery."

"As illustrated by the remains of which you were speaking to Mr.
Bellingham," Jervis remarked.

"Exactly," Thorndyke answered, "though we could hardly imagine a
reasonably intelligent criminal adopting a watercress-bed as a
hiding-place."

"No. That was certainly an error of judgment. By the way, I thought it
best to say nothing while you were talking to Bellingham, but I noticed
that, in discussing the p