positively bewildering. Don't you think so?"

"As you put it," I answered, "the case is extraordinarily puzzling."

"But how else would you put it?" he demanded, with ill-concealed
eagerness.

"I mean that, if Reuben is the man you believe him to be, the thing is
incomprehensible."

"Quite so," he agreed, though he was evidently disappointed at my
colourless answer.

He walked on silently for a few minutes and then said: "I suppose it
would not be fair to ask if you see any way out of the difficulty? We
are all, naturaly anxious about the upshot of the affair, seeing what
poor old Reuben's position is."

"Naturally. But the fact is that I know no more than you do, and as to
Thorndyke, you might as well cross-examine a Whitstable native as put
questions to him."

"Yes, so I gathered from Juliet. But I thought you might have gleaned
some notion of the line of defence from your work in the laboratory--the
microscopical and photographic work I mean."

"I was never in the laboratory until last night, when Thorndyke took me
there with your aunt and Miss Gibson; the work there is done by the
laboratory assistant, and his knowledge of the case, I should say, is
about as great as a type-founder's knowledge of the books that he is