Page:Bentley- Trent's Last Case (Nelson, nd).djvu/366

358 Is that an unheard-of situation? He escapes by means of a bold and ingenious piece of deception. That seems to me a thing that might happen every day, and probably does so.' He attacked his now unrecognizable mutton.

'I should like to know,' said Trent, after an alimentary pause in the conversation, 'whether there is anything that ever happened on the face of the earth that you could not represent as quite ordinary and commonplace by such a line of argument as that.'

A gentle smile illuminated Mr. Cupples's face. 'You must not suspect me of empty paradox,' he said. 'My meaning will become clearer, perhaps, if I mention some things which do appear to me essentially remarkable. Let me see.... Well, I would call the life history of the liver-fluke, which we owe to the researches of Poulton, an essentially remarkable thing.'

'I am unable to argue the point,' replied Trent. 'Fair science may have smiled upon the liver-fluke's humble birth, but I never even heard it mentioned.'

'It is not, perhaps, an appetizing subject,' said Mr. Cupples thoughtfully, 'and I will not