void
marking the bones. But you note here that there is not a single scratch
or score on any one of the bones, not even where the finger was removed.
Now, if you have ever prepared bones for a museum, as I have, you will
remember the extreme care that is necessary in disarticulating joints to
avoid disfiguring the articular ends of the bones with cuts and
scratches."

"Then you think that the person who dismembered this body must have had
some anatomical knowledge and skill?"

"That is what has been suggested. The suggestion is not mine."

"Then I infer that you don't agree?"

Thorndyke smiled. "I am sorry to be so cryptic, Berkeley, but you
understand that I can't make statements. Still, I am trying to lead you
to make certain inferences from the facts that are in your possession."

"If I make the right inference, will you tell me?" I asked.

"It won't be necessary," he answered, with the same quiet smile. "When
you have fitted a puzzle together you don't need to be told that you
have done it."

It was most infernally tantalising. I pondered on the problem with a
scowl of such intense cogitation that Thorndyke laughed outright.

"It seems to me," I said, at length, "that the identity of the remains
is the primary question and that is a question of fact. It doesn't seem
any use to speculate about it."

"Exactly. Either these bones are the remains of John Bellingham or they
are not. There will be no doubt on the subject when all the bones are
assembled--if ever they are. And the settlement of that question will
probably throw light on the further question: Who deposited them in the
places in which they were found? But to return to your observations: did
you gather nothing from the other bones? From the complete state of the
neck vertebrae, for instance?"

"Well, it did strike me as rather odd that the fellow should have gone
to the trouble of separating the atlas from the skull. He must have been
pretty handy with the scalpel to have done it as cleanly as he seems to
have done; but I don't see why he should have gone about the business in
the most inconvenient way."

"You notice the uniformity of method. He has separated the head from the
spine, instead of cutting through the spine lower down, as most persons
would have done: he removed the arms with the entire shoulder-girdle,
instead of simply cutting them off at the shoulder-joints. Even in the
thighs the same peculiarity appears; for in neither case was