Eleven Possible Cases — John Stuart Mill — John Shaqi
Eleven Possible Cases
John Stuart Mill · en
A glance gave the answer. It was the legs and half the body of a man,
whose head and shoulders were thoroughly charred, as Jim was horrified
to see when he pulled the remains out upon the ground.
Jim ran to tell the superintendent, and within a few minutes a knot of
excited men surrounded the body. The gathering grew in numbers rapidly.
By means of the clothing the dead and partially burned man was
identified at once as Tonio Ravelli. That he had been murdered was an
equally easy conclusion. The murderer had apparently sought to cremate
the corpse. Whether he had found it physically impossible, or had been
frightened away, could only be conjectured.
"Who can have done it?" was the question asked by Superintendent
Brainerd, the autocrat of Overlook.
There was a minute of silence, with all staring intently at the body, as
though half expecting it to somehow disclose the truth. The night
watchman was first to speak.
"Eph might have done it," he said.
Then he told of the monomaniac's visit to the telegraph station, and of
the acute stage which his malady had reached. Nobody else present had
seen him since the previous evening. Superintendent Brainerd ordered a
search of the lodgings. Ten minutes were sufficient for a round of the
different quarters. Eph was in none of them. The searchers returned to
the furnace, and with them came Gerald Heath.
"I met Eph yonder where the paths cross, not a hundred yards from here,
a little past midnight," Gerald said. "He was terribly excited. That was
after he had tried in vain to telegraph a crazy message. Evidently his
delusion, that his whole life was condensed into a brief space, had
driven him to a frenzy. He spoke of walking to Dimmersville, but I tried
to quiet him, and he disappeared."
Dimmersville was a town about ten miles distant, in a direction opposite
to that from which the railroad had worked its way through the
mountains. No wire connected it with Overlook, and there was no public
road for the nearest third of the way, although a faint trail showed the
course that a few persons had taken on foot or horseback.
"Very likely Eph has gone toward Dimmersville," Brainerd argued, "and we
must try to catch him."