"I'm certain of it. We must not lose sight of the fact that while there is life in that body there is always danger for us. Not much danger, I admit—everything was managed too well in the first instance. But still there is danger, and a danger that grows."
"How grows?"
"Because at the present moment the newspapers of the civilized world are full of your name. Because the eyes of the whole world are directed towards this house in Regent's Park."
"There is something in that, Wilson. Now my thought is that if the body could actually be found, then Miss Poole would know, with the rest of the world, that the fellow was actually dead. Could that be managed?"
Guest lit a cigarette. "I suppose so," he said, thoughtfully. "But that would be giving up an experiment I had hoped to have had the opportunity of performing. Human vivisection would give us such an enormous increase of scientific knowledge. It is only silly sentiment that does not give the criminal to the surgeon. But have it your own way, William. I will forego the experiment. It is obvious that if the body is to be found, there must be no traces of anything of that sort. There would be a post-mortem of course."
"Then what do you propose, Guest?"
"Let me smoke for a moment and think."
He sat silent for two or three minutes with the heavy eyelids almost veiling the large bistre-coloured eyes.
Then he looked up. His smile was so horrible in its cunning that Gouldesbrough made an involuntary shrinking movement. But it was a movement dictated by the nerves and not by the conscious brain, for, dreadful as was the thing Guest was about to say, there was something in Sir William Gouldesbrough's mind which was more dreadful still.
"The body shall be found," Guest said, "in the river, somewhere down Wapping way, anywhere in the densely-populated districts of the Docks. It shall be dressed in common clothes. When it is discovered and identified—I know how to arrange a certain identification—it will be assumed that Rathbone simply went down to the slums and lost himself. There have been cases known where reputable citizens have suddenly disappeared from their surroundings of their own free will and dropped into the lowest kind of life for no explainable reason. De Quincey mentions such a case in one of his essays."