"Goodfrend for Jesus sake forbeare
To digg the dust encloasèd heare
Blest be ye man yt spares these stones
And curst be he yt moves my bones."
"There's not much chance of any one doing that—look, the altar-step goes right across the tombstone. I wonder what they would find, if they did move the stone."
"Nothing, madam," said a voice behind her—"nothing human, that is."
She turned to face a tall, gaunt man in loose, ill-fitting clothes with a despatch-case in one hand and three or four note-books in the other. "Excuse my joining in," he said, "but I couldn't help hearing what you said. Whatever there is in that tomb, there is not the body of the man Shakespeare. Manuscripts there may be, but no corpse."
"What makes you think so?" she asked.
"Evidence, madam, evidence. The evidence of facts as well as of ciphers."
"Oh," she said, and smiled brilliantly, "you must be a Baconian. How very interesting!"
Now she had received all Edward's criticisms of Shakespearian legend with a growing and visible impatience. Yet for this stranger she had nothing but sympathy and interest.
"It is interesting," said the stranger. "There's nothing like it. I've spent eighteen years on it, and I know now how little I know. It isn't only Bacon and Shakespeare; it's a great system—a great cipher system extending through all the great works of the period."