We passed through the outskirts of the village--gathering a small train of stealthy followers, who dogged us to the door of the mortuary and hungrily watched us as the superintendent let us in and locked the door after us. “There you are,” said Miller, indicating the slate table on which the remains lay, covered by a sheet soaked in an antiseptic. “I’ve seen all I want to see.” And he retired into a corner and lit his pipe. The remnants of mortality, disclosed by the removal of the sheet, were dreadfully suggestive of crime in its most brutal and horrible form, but they offered little information. The dismemberment had been manifestly rude and unskilful, and the remains were clearly those of a woman of medium size and apparently in the prime of life. The principal interest centred in the left arm, the waxen skin of which bore a very distinct tattoo-mark, consisting of the initials R.M. over a very symmetrical heart, transfixed by an arrow, beneath which were the initials J.B. The letters were Roman capitals about half an inch high, well-formed and finished with serifs, and the heart and arrow quite well drawn. I looked reflectively at the device, standing out in dull blue from its ivory-like background, and speculated vaguely as to whom J.B. might have been and how many predecessors and successors he had had. And then my interest waned, and I joined the superintendent in the corner. It was a sordid case, and a conviction being a foregone conclusion, it did not seem to call for further attention. Thorndyke, however, seemed to think otherwise. But that was his way. When he was engaged in an investigation he put out of his mind everything that he had been told and began from the very beginning. That was what he was doing now. He was inspecting these remains as if they had been the remains of some unidentified person. He made, and noted down, minute measurements of the limbs; he closely examined every square inch of surface; he scrutinized each finger separately, and then with the aid of his portable inking-plate and roller, took a complete set of finger-prints. He measured all the dimensions of the tattoo-marks with a delicate calliper-gauge, and then examined the marks themselves, first with a common lens and then with the high-power Coddington. The principles that he laid down in his lectures at the hospital were: “Accept no statement without verification; observe every fact independently for yourselves; and keep an open mind.” And, certainly, no one ever carried out more conscientiously his own precepts. “Do you know, Dr. Jervis,” the superintendent whispered to me as Thorndyke brought his Coddington to bear on the tattoo-marks, “I believe this lens business is becoming a habit with the doctor. It’s my firm conviction that if somebody were to blow up the Houses of Parliament, he’d go and examine the ruins through a magnifying glass. Just look at him poring over those tattooed letters that you could read plainly twenty feet away!”