Dr. H—— took the scissors and cut the silk at each seal and knot, then tore off the gummed white writing paper (which was as fresh as when he had put it on), and tried to pull open the card-board box. But as he could not do this in consequence of the lid being glued down, he took out his penknife and cut it all round. As he did so, he looked at me and said, "Mark my words. There will be nothing written on the paper. It is impossible!"
He lifted the lid, and behold the box was empty! The half sheet of notepaper and the half cedar wood pencil had both entirely disappeared. Not a crumb of lead, nor a shred of paper remained behind. I looked at the doctor, and the doctor looked completely bewildered.
"Well!" I said, interrogatively.
He shifted about—grew red—and began to bluster.
"What do you make of it?" I asked. "How do you account for it?"
"In the easiest way in the world," he replied, trying to brave it out. "It's the most transparent deception I ever saw. They've kept the thing a fortnight and had time to do anything with it. A child could see through this. Surely your bright wits can want no help to an explanation."
"I am not so bright as you give me credit for," I answered. "Will you explain your meaning to me?"
"With pleasure. They have evidently made an invisible slit in the joining of the box cover, and with a pair of fine forceps drawn the paper through it, bit by bit. For the pencil, they drew that by the same means to the slit and then pared it, little by little, with a lancet, till they could shake out the fragments."
"That must have required very careful manipulation," I observed.
"Naturally. But they've taken a fortnight to do it in."