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Then take a single
unit from that million, and what can you predict concerning him?
Nothing. He may die to-morrow; he may live to a couple of hundred. He
may die of a cold in the head or a cut finger, or from falling off the
cross of St. Paul's. In a particular case you can predict nothing."
"That is perfectly true," said I. And then, realising that I had been
led away from the topic of John Bellingham, I ventured to return to it.
"That was a very mysterious affair--the disappearance of John
Bellingham, I mean."
"Why mysterious?" asked Mr. Jellicoe. "Men disappear from time to time,
and when they reappear, the explanations that they give (when they give
any) seem to be more or less adequate."
"But the circumstances were surely rather mysterious."
"What circumstances?" asked Mr. Jellicoe.
"I mean the way in which he vanished from Mr. Hurst's house."
"In what way did he vanish from it?"
"Well, of course, I don't know."
"Precisely. Neither do I. Therefore I can't say whether that way was a
mysterious one or not.


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