At this reply the Superintendent’s eyes opened until his face might have been a symbolic mask of astonishment. Grasping his hair with both hands, he rose slowly from his chair, staring at Thorndyke as if at some alarming apparition.
“You’ll be the death of me, Doctor!” he exclaimed. “You really will. I am not fit for these shocks at my time of life. What is it you ask me to do? I am to arrest this man! What man? Here is a wax-work gentleman in a coffin—at least, I suppose that is what he is—that might have come straight from Madame Tussaud’s. Am I to arrest him? And there is a casket full of ashes somewhere. Am I to arrest those? Or am I off my head or dreaming?”
Thorndyke smiled at him indulgently. “Now, Miller,” said he, “don’t pretend to be foolish, because you are not. The man whom you are to arrest is a live man, and what is more, he is easily accessible whenever you choose to lay your hands on him.”
“Do you know where to find him?”
“Yes,” Thorndyke replied. “I, myself, will conduct you to his house, which is in Abbey-road, Hornsey, nearly opposite Miss D’Arblay’s studio.”
I gave a gasp of amazement on hearing this, which directed the Superintendent’s attention to me.
“Very well, Doctor,” he said, “I will take your information, but you needn’t swear to it: just sign your name. I must be off now, but I will look in to-night about nine, if that will do, to get the necessary particulars and settle the arrangements with you. Probably to-morrow afternoon will be a good time to make the arrest. What do you think?”
“I should think it would be an excellent time,” Thorndyke replied; “but we can settle definitely to-night.”
With this, the Superintendent, having taken the signed paper from Thorndyke, shook both our hands and bustled away with the traces of his late surprise still visible on his countenance.
The recognition of the tenant of the coffin as Simon Bendelow had come on me with almost as great a shock as it had on the two witnesses, but for a different reason. My late experiences enabled me to guess at once that the mysterious tenant was a wax-work figure, presumably of Polton’s creation. But what I found utterly inexplicable was that such a wax-work should have been produced in the likeness of a man whom neither Polton nor Thorndyke had ever seen. The astonishing conversation between the latter and Miller had, for the moment, driven this mystery out of my mind; but as soon as the Superintendent had gone, I stepped over to the coffin and looked in at the window. And then I was more amazed than ever. For the face that I saw was not the face that I had expected to see. There, it is true, was the old familiar skull-cap, which Bendelow had worn, pulled down over the temples above the jaw-bandage. But it was the wrong face (incidentally I now understood what had become of Polton’s eyelashes. That conscientious realist had evidently taken no risks.).