“Quite sure. The appearance, through a powerful lens, is unmistakable. Tattoo-marks are made, as you know, of course, by painting Indian ink on the skin and pricking it in with fine needles. In the living skin the needle wounds heal up at once and disappear, but in the dead skin the needle-holes remain unclosed and can be easily seen with a lens. In this case the skin had been well washed and the surface pressed with some smooth object; but the holes were plainly visible and the ink was still in them.” “Well, I’m sure!” said Miller. “I never heard of tattooing a dead body before.” “Very few people have, I expect,” said Thorndyke. “But there is one class of persons who know all about it: the persons who deal in Maori heads.” “Indeed?” queried Miller. “How does it concern them?” “Those heads are usually elaborately tattooed, and the value of a head depends on the quality of the tattooing. Now, when those heads became objects of trade, the dealers conceived the idea of touching up defective specimens by additional tattooing on the dead head, and from this they proceeded to obtain heads which had no tattoo-marks, and turn them into tattooed heads.” “Well, to be sure,” said the superintendent, with a grin, “what wicked men there are in the world, aren’t there, Dr. Jervis?” I murmured a vague assent, but I was principally conscious of a desire to kick myself for having failed to pick this invaluable clue out of George Chapman’s statement. “And now,” said Miller, “we come to the box. How do you know it is the wrong one?” “That,” replied Thorndyke, “is proved even more conclusively. The original box was made by Fletchers, in Holborn. It was sold to Chapman, and his initials painted on it, on the 9th of last April. I have seen the entry in the day-book. The locks of these boxes are made by Burden Brothers of Queen Victoria Street, and as they are quite high-class locks each is given a registered number, which is stamped on the lock. The number on the lock of the box that you have is 5007, and Burden’s books show that it was made and sold to Fletchers about the middle of July--the sale was dated the 13th. Therefore this cannot be Chapman’s box.” “Apparently not,” Miller agreed. “But whose box is it? And what has become of Chapman’s box?” “That,” replied Thorndyke, “was presumably taken away in Mrs. Murchison’s dress-basket.” “Then who the deuce is Mrs. Murchison?” demanded the superintendent. “I should say,” replied Thorndyke, “that she was formerly known as Rebecca Mings.” “The deceased!” exclaimed Miller, falling back in his chair with a guffaw. “My eye! What a lark it is! But she must have some sauce, to walk off with the jewellery and leave her own dismembered remains in exchange! By the way, whose remains are they?” “We shall come to that presently,” Thorndyke answered. “Now we have to consider the man you have in custody.”