complete. Now, supposing Sir Grenville was not really Sir Grenville
Rusholm, supposing he had acquired the family knowledge and papers from
the real man--when that man was dying, perhaps--and in due time used
them to claim the estates. For about twenty years he has enjoyed the
result of his fraud, his intimate friend, Mr. Thompson, being in his
confidence, and very likely receiving some of the spoil. Suddenly Mr.
Thompson learns that some one else knows the secret, and hurries to
England to warn Sir Grenville."

"But why steal the body?" asked Zena.

"On leaving Dr. Coles, Wigan, I went to see Professor Sayle, who, with
the exception of the German physician Hauptmann, probably knows more
about oriental diseases and medicine than any man living. He proved to me
that it is possible by means of a certain vegetable drug to produce
apparent death. Fakirs often use it. The ordinary medical man would
certainly be deceived. Ultimately actual death would ensue were not the
antidote to the drug administered, but the suspension of life will
continue for a considerable time."

"It is pure speculation," I said.

"We have got to explain the theft of a dead body. I explain it by saying
there was no dead body," said Quarles sharply, as if I were denying a
self-evident fact. "I go still further. Judging by Coles's description of
the man calling himself Sir Grenville, I doubt his courage for carrying
through either the original fraud or the plan of escape. I believe his
wife was the moving spirit throughout, and it is quite possible the drug
was administered without her husband's knowledge."