"Does the paper give any description of the missing man, sir?" I asked. -- "Yes; quite an exhaustive description. Indeed, it is exhaustive to the verge of impropriety, considering that the man may possibly turn up alive and well at any moment. It seems that he has an old Pott's fracture of the left ankle, a linear, longitudinal scar on each knee -- origin not stated, but easily guessed at -- and that he has tattooed on his chest in vermilion a very finely and distinctly executed representation of the symbolical Eye of Osiris -- or Horus or Ra, as the different authorities have it. There certainly ought to be no difficulty in identifying the body. But we will hope that it won't come to that..."

Author Biography

Richard Austin Freeman (1862 - 1943) was a British writer of detective stories, mostly featuring the medico-legal forensic investigator Dr. Thorndyke. He claimed to have invented the inverted detective story (a crime fiction in which the commission of the crime is described at the beginning, usually including the identity of the perpetrator, with the story then describing the detective's attempt to solve the mystery). Freeman used some of his early experiences as a colonial surgeon in his novels.