“It doesn’t,” replied Thorndyke. “It opens on Field-street.”
“On Field-street!” I repeated in surprise. “I wonder why they didn’t let me in that way. It is really the front of the house.”
“I think,” answered Thorndyke, “that if you open the door and look out, you will understand why you were admitted at the back.”
I unbolted the door, and, opening it, stepped out on the wide threshold and looked up and down the street. Thorndyke was right. The thoroughfare was undoubtedly Field-street, down which we had passed only a few minutes ago, and close by, on the right hand, was the canal bridge. Strongly impressed with the oddity of the affair, I turned to re-enter, and as I turned I glanced up at the number on the door. As my eye lighted on it I uttered a cry of astonishment. For the number was fifty-two!
“But this is amazing!” I exclaimed, re-entering the hall—where Thorndyke stood watching me with quiet amusement—and shutting the door. “It seems that Usher and I were actually visiting at the same house.”
“Evidently,” said he.
“But it almost looks as if we were visiting the same patient!”
“There can be practically no doubt that you were,” he agreed. “It was on that assumption that I induced Miller to apply for the exhumation order, and the empty coffin seems to confirm it completely.”
I was thunderstruck, not only by the incredible thing that had happened, but by Thorndyke’s uncanny knowledge of all the circumstances.
“Then,” I said, after a pause, “if Usher and I were attending the same man, we were both attending Bendelow.”