and the jar and the ash-bowl, and I presume those are the clothes that
the undertakers removed from the body. Shall we look them over?"

He took up the clothes which lay, roughly folded, on a chair and held
them up, garment by garment.

"These are evidently the trousers," he remarked, spreading them out on
the bed. "Here is a little white spot on the middle of the thigh which
looks like a patch of small crystals from a drop of the solution. Just
light the lamp, Jervis, and let us examine it with a lens."

I lit the lamp, and when we had examined the spot minutely and
identified it as a mass of minute crystals, Thorndyke asked:

"What do you make of those creases? You see there is one on each leg."

"It looks as if the trousers had been turned up. But if they have been
they must have been turned up about seven inches. Poor Jeffrey couldn't
have had much regard for appearances, for they would have been right
above his socks. But perhaps the creases were made in undressing the
body."

"That is possible," said Thorndyke: "though I don't quite see how it
would have happened. I notice that his pockets seem to have been
emptied--no, wait; here is something in the waistcoat pocket."

He drew out a shabby, pigskin card-case and a stump of lead pencil, at
which latter he looked with what seemed to me much more interest than
was deserved by so commonplace an object.