Turning over the pages of the album, Mr. ———— uttered an exclamation of terror. "Who is that?" he exclaimed, pointing to the portrait of a young man in the uniform of a private soldier.
"That," said the friend, "was a soldier who shot his sergeant dead in the barrack-yard. He was tried, and it was proved at the trial that he had shown symptoms of insanity before committing the act. He was sent to Broadmoor."
The unhappy father went to the great criminal lunatic asylum, and there found his son a hopeless maniac. He had enlisted under a false name, and under that name had been tried. The father read the case in the papers at the time, but had no idea it was his own son who was being tried for his life.
The secret of many a mysterious disappearance lies buried in the earth, sometimes in cellars, behind brick walls, beneath the flooring of a kitchen or an outhouse, in the garden, in the farmyard. We even know that people who have disappeared mysteriously out of life may be lying securely packed and stored away in a great furniture repository.
Miss Hacker had lain in the coal-cellar that was her grave for two years before chance brought her body to light. Miss Holland might be lying now in the Moat Farm had not Dougal gone to the Bank of England to cash certain notes, the numbers of which had been forwarded to the bank authorities.
When the house of a fashionable physician in the West End of London was being re-drained some years ago, the body of a beautiful girl was discovered buried under the flooring. There was no clue to her identity, and the coroner's verdict was given on the body of "some person unknown."
But there are other ways of disposing of the bodies of people whose mysterious disappearance is due to an act of violence.
William Smith has disappeared. He leaves home in the ordinary way and never returns. There is nothing to account for his disappearance. He was in no difficulty. He was happy in his domestic circumstances. He has taken no money away with him, apparently. Every search is made for him, but no trace of him, living or dead, can be found.
But he has been murdered and buried—buried in a cemetery with the rites of the church, and there is a tombstone above his grave—only somebody else's name is on it.