Every road seems to end in a cul-de-sac."
"Oh, come!" said Thorndyke, "this is mere laziness. Berkeley wants to
witness a display of your forensic wisdom. A learned counsel may be in
a fog--he very often is--but he doesn't state the fact baldly; he wraps
it up in a decent verbal disguise. Tell us how you arrive at your
conclusion. Show us that you have really weighed the facts."
"Very well," said Jervis, "I will give you a masterly analysis of the
case--leading to nothing." He continued to puff at his pipe for a time
with slight embarrassment, as I thought--and I fully sympathised with
him. Finally he blew a little cloud and commenced:
"The position appears to be this: Here is a man who is seen to enter a
certain house, who is shown into a certain room and shut in. He is not
seen to come out, and yet, when the room is next entered, it is found to
be empty; and that man is never seen again, alive or dead. That is a
pretty tough beginning.
"Now, it is evident that one of three things must have happened. Either
he must have remained in that room, or at least in that house, alive; or
he must have died, naturally or otherwise, and his body have been
concealed; or he must have left the house unobserved.
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