The Second R. Austin Freeman Megapack

by R. Austin Freeman

  “We are acting under the doctor’s orders, miss,” said Polton, thereby, in his opinion, closing the subject.

  “You mean Dr. Thorndyke’s?” said Marion, not realizing—or not choosing to realize—that, to Polton, there was no other doctor in the world who counted.

  “Yes, miss. The doctor’s orders must be carried out.”

  “Of course they must,” she agreed warmly, “since he has been so very good as to take all this trouble about my safety. But there is no need for both of you to be here together. Couldn’t you arrange to take turns on duty—alternate days or a half-day each? I hate the thought that I am wasting the whole of both your times.”

  I did not look on the suggestion with favour, for I was reluctant to yield up to any man—even to Polton—the privilege of watching over the safety of one who was so infinitely dear to me. Nor was Polton much less unwilling to agree, for he loathed to leave a piece of work uncompleted. However, Marion refused to accept our denials (as is the way of women), and the end of it was that Polton and I had to arrange our duties in half-day shifts, changing over at the end of each week, the first spell allotting the mornings to me and the latter half of the day—with the duty of seeing Marion home—to him.

  Thus, during each of the following six working days, I found myself with the entire afternoon and evening free. The former I usually spent at the hospital, but in the evenings, feeling too unsettled for study, I occupied myself very pleasantly with long walks through the inexhaustible streets, extending my knowledge of the town and making systematic explorations of such distant regions as Mile End, Kingsland, Dalston, Wapping and the Borough.

  One evening I bethought me of my promise to look in on Usher. I did not find myself yearning for his society, but a promise is a promise. Accordingly, when I had finished my solitary dinner, I set forth from my lodgings in Camden Square and made a bee-line for Clerkenwell; so far, that is to say, as was possible, while keeping to the wider streets. For in this respect, I followed Thorndyke’s instructions to the letter, though, as to the other matter—that of keeping a bright lookout—I was less attentive, my mind being much more occupied with thoughts of Marion (who would, just now, be on her way home under Polton’s escort) than with any considerations of my own personal safety. Indeed, to tell the truth, I was inclined to be more than a little sceptical as to the need for these extraordinary precautions.

  I found Usher in the act of bowing out the last of the ‘evening consultations’ and was welcomed by him with enthusiasm.

  “Delighted to see you, old chap!” he exclaimed, shaking my hand warmly. “It is good of you to drop in on an old fossil like me. Didn’t much think you would. I suppose you don’t often come this way?”

  “No,” I replied. “It is rather off my beat. I’ve finished with Hoxton—for the present, at any rate.”

  “So have I,” said Usher, “since poor old Crile went off to the better land.”

  “Crile?” I repeated. “Who was he?”

  “Don’t you remember me telling you about his funeral, when they had those Sunday-school kids yowling hymns round the grave? That was Mr. Crile—Christian name, Jonathan.”

  “I remember, but I didn’t realize that he was a Hoxton aristocrat.”

  “Well, he was. Fifty-two Field Street was his earthly abode. I used to remember it by the number of weeks in the year. And glad enough I was when he hopped off his perch, for his confounded landlady, a Mrs. Pepper, would insist on fixing the times for my visits, and deuced inconvenient times, too. Between four and six on Tuesdays and Fridays. I hate patients who turn your visits into appointments. Upsets your whole visiting-list.”

  “It seems to be the fashion in Hoxton,” I remarked. “I had to make my visits at appointed times, too. It would have been frightfully inconvenient if I had been busy. Is it often done?”

  “They will always do it if you let ’em. Of course it is a convenience to a woman who doesn’t keep a servant, to know what time the doctor is going to call; but it doesn’t do to give way to ’em.”

  I assented to this excellent principle, noting, however, that he seemed to have “given way to ’em” all the same.

  As we had been talking, we had gradually drifted from the surgery up a flight of stairs to a shabby, cosy little room on the first floor, where a cheerful fire was burning and a copper kettle on a trivet purred contentedly and breathed forth little clouds of steam. Usher inducted me into a large easy-chair, the depressed seat of which suggested its customary use by an elephant of sedentary habits, and produced from a cupboard a spirit-decanter, a high-shouldered Dutch gin-bottle, a sugar-basin and a couple of tumblers and sugar-crushers.

  “Whisky or Hollands?” he demanded, and as curiosity led me to select the latter, he commented: “That’s right, Gray. Good stuff, Hollands. Touches up the cubical epithelium—what! I am rather partial to a drop of Hollands.”

  It was no empty profession. The initial dose made me open my eyes; and that was only a beginning. In a twinkling, as it seemed, his tumbler was empty and the collaboration of the bottle and the copper kettle was repeated. And so it went on for nearly an hour, until I began to grow quite uneasy, though without any visible cause, so far as Usher was concerned. He did not turn a hair (he hadn’t very many to turn for that matter, but I speak figuratively). The only effect that I could observe was an increasing fluency of speech with a tendency to discursiveness; and I must admit that his conversation was highly entertaining. But his evident intention to ‘make a night of it’ set me planning to make my escape without appearing to slight his hospitality. How I should have managed it, unaided by the direct interposition of Providence, I cannot guess; for his conversation had now taken the form of an interminable sentence punctuated by indistinguishable commas; but in the midst of this steadily-flowing stream of eloquence the outer silence was rent by the sudden jangling of a bell.

  Usher stopped short, stared at me solemnly, deliberately emptied his tumbler and stood up.

  “Night bell, ol’ chappie,” he explained. “Got to go out. But don’t you disturb yourself. Be back in a few minutes. Soon polish ’em off.”

  “I’ll walk round with you as far as your patient’s house,” said I, “and then I shall have to get home. It is past ten and I have a longish walk to Camden Square.”

  He was disposed to argue the point, but another violent jangling cut his protests short and lent him hurrying down the stairs with me close at his heels. A couple of minutes later we were out in the street, following in the wake of a hurrying figure; and, looking at Usher as he walked sedately at my side, with his top-hat, his whiskers and his inevitable umbrella, I had the feeling that all those jorums of Hollands had been consumed in vain. In appearance, in manner, in speech and in gait he was just his normal self, with never a hint of any change from the status quo ante bellum.

  Our course led us into the purlieus of St. John Street Road, where we presently turned into a narrow, winding and curiously desolate little street, along which we proceeded for a few hundred yards, when our ‘fore-runner’ halted at a door into which he inserted a latch-key. When we arrived at the open door, inside which a shadowy figure was lurking, Usher stopped and held out his hand.

  “Good night, old chap,” he said. “Sorry you can’t come back with me. If you keep straight on and turn to the left at the cross-roads, you will come out presently into the King’s Cross Road. Then you’ll know your way. So long.”

  He turned into the dark passage, the door was closed and I went on my way.

  The little meandering street was singularly silent and deserted; and its windings cut off the light from the scanty street-lamps, so that stretches of it were in almost total darkness. As I strode forward the echoes of my footfalls resounded with hollow reverberations which smote my ear—and ought have smitten my conscience—causing me to wonder, with grim amusement, what Thorndyke would have said if he could have seen me thus setting his instructions at defiance. Indeed, I was so far sensible of the impropriety of my
being in such a place at such an hour that I was about to turn to take a look back along the street; but at the very moment that I halted within a few feet of a street-lamp, something struck the brim of my hat with a sharp, weighty blow like the stroke of a hammer, and I heard a dull thud from the lamp-post.

  In an instant I spun round, mighty fierce, whipping out my pistol, cocking it and pointing it down the street as I raced back towards the spot from whence the missile had appeared to come. There was not a soul in sight nor any sound of movement, and the shallow doorways seemed to offer no possible hiding-place. But some thirty yards back I came suddenly on a narrow opening like an empty doorway but actually the entrance to a covered alley not more than three feet wide and as dark as a pocket. This was evidently the ambush (which I had passed, like a fool, without observing it), and I halted beside it, with my pistol still pointed, listening intently and considering what I had better do. My first impulse had been to charge into the alley, but a moment’s reflection showed the futility of such a proceeding. Probably my assailant had made off by some well-known outlet; but in any case it would be sheer insanity for me to plunge into that pitch-dark passage. For if he were still lurking there, he would be invisible to me, whereas I should be a clear silhouette against the dim light of the street. Moreover, I had seen no one and I could not shoot at any chance stranger whom I might find there. Reluctantly, I recognized that there was nothing for it but to retreat cautiously and be more careful in future.

  My retirement would have looked an odd proceeding to an observer, if there had been one, for I had to retreat crab-wise in order that I might keep the entrance of the alley covered with my pistol and yet see where I was going. When I reached the lamp-post, I scanned the area of lighted ground beneath it, and, almost at the first glance, perceived an object like a largish marble lying in the road. It proved, when I picked it up, to be a leaden ball, like an old-fashioned musket-ball, with one flattened side, which had prevented it from rolling away from the spot where it had fallen. I dropped it into my pocket and resumed my masterly retreat until, at length, the cross-roads came into view. Then I quickened my pace, and as I reached the corner, put away my pistol after slipping in the safety-catch.

  Once more out in the lighted and frequented main streets, my thoughts were free to turn over this extraordinary experience. But I did not allow them to divert me from a very careful lookout. All my scepticism was gone now. I realized that Thorndyke had not been making mere vague guesses, but that he had clearly foreseen that something of this kind would probably happen. That was, to me, the most perplexing feature of this incomprehensible affair.

  I turned it over in my mind again and again and could make nothing of it. I could see no adequate reason why this man should want to make away with me. True, I was Marion’s protector, but that—even if he were aware of it—did not seem an adequate reason. Indeed, I could not see why he was seeking to make away with her—nor, even, was it clear to me that there had been a reasonable motive for murdering her father. But as to myself, I seemed to be out of the picture altogether. The man had nothing to fear from me or to gain by my death.

  That was how it appeared to me; and yet I saw plainly that I must be mistaken. There must be something behind all this—something that was unknown to me but was known to Thorndyke. What could it be? I found myself unable to make any sort of guess. In the end, I decided to call on Thorndyke the following evening, report the incident and see if I could get any enlightenment from him.

  The first part of this programme I carried out successfully enough, but the second presented more difficulties.

  Thorndyke was not a very communicative man, and a perfectly impossible one to pump. What be chose to tell, he told freely; and beyond that, no amount of ingenuity could extract the faintest shadow of a hint.

  “I am afraid I am disturbing you, sir,” I said in some alarm, as I noted a portentous heap of documents on the table.

  “No,” he replied. “I have nearly finished, and I shall treat you as a friend and keep you waiting while I do the little that is left.” He turned to his papers and took up his pen, but paused to cast one of his quick, penetrating glances at me.

  “Has anything fresh happened?” he asked.

  “Our unknown friend has had a pot at me,” I answered. “That is all.”

  He laid down his pen and, leaning back in his chair, demanded particulars. I gave him an account of what had happened on the preceding night, and taking the leaden ball from my pocket, laid it on the table. He picked it up, examined it curiously and then placed it on the letter-balance.

  “Just over half an ounce,” he said. “It is a mercy it missed your head. With that weight and the velocity indicated by the flattening, it would have dropped you insensible with a fractured skull.”

  “And then he would have come along and put the finishing touches, I suppose. But I wonder how he shot the thing. Could he have used an air-gun?”

  Thorndyke shook his head. “An air-gun that would discharge a ball of that weight would make quite a loud report, and you say you heard nothing. You are quite sure of that, by the way?”

  “Perfectly. The place was as silent as the grave.”

  “Then he must have used a catapult; and an uncommonly efficient weapon it is in skilful hands, and as portable as a pistol. You mustn’t give him another chance, Gray.”

  “I am not going to if I can help it. But what the deuce does the fellow want to pot at me for? It is a most mysterious thing. Do you understand what it is all about, sir?”

  “I do not,” he replied. “My knowledge of the facts of this case is nearly all second-hand knowledge, derived from you. You know all that I know and probably more.”

  “That is all very well, sir,” said I; “but you foresaw that this was likely to happen. I didn’t. Therefore you must know more about the case than I do.”

  He chuckled softly. “You are confusing knowledge and inference,” said he. “We had the same facts, but our inferences were not the same. It is just a matter of experience. You haven’t squeezed out of the facts as much as they are capable of yielding. Come, now, Gray; while I am finishing my work, you shall look over my notes of this case, and then you should take a sort of bird’s-eye view of the whole case and see if anything new occurs to you. And you must add to those notes that this man has been at the enormous trouble of stalking you continuously, that he shadowed you to Usher’s, that he waited patiently for you to come out, that he followed you most skillfully and took instant advantage of the first opportunity that you gave him. You might also note that he did not elect to overtake you and make a direct attack on you as he did on Miss D’Arblay. Note those facts and consider what their significance may be. And now just go through this little dossier. It won’t take you many minutes.”

  He took out of a drawer a small portfolio, on the cover of which was written ‘J. D’Arblay, decd.’ Passing it to me, he returned to his documents.

  I opened it and found it to contain a number of separate abstracts, each duly headed with its descriptive title, and an envelope marked “Photographs.” Glancing over the abstracts, I saw that they dealt respectively with J. D’Arblay, the Inquest, the Van Zellen Case, Miss D’Arblay, Dr. Gray and Mr. Morris; the last containing, somewhat to my surprise, all the details that I had given Thorndyke respecting that rather mysterious person together with an account of my dealings with him and cross-references to the abstract bearing my name. It was all very complete and methodical, but none of the abstracts contained any information that was new to me. If this represented all the facts at were known to Thorndyke, then he was no better informed than I was. But he had evidently got a great deal more out of the information than I had.

  Returning the abstracts with some disappointment to the portfolio, I turned to the photographs, and then I got a very thorough surprise. There were only three, and the first two were of no great interest, one representing the two casts of the guinea and the other the plaster mask of Morris. But the third fairly to
ok away my breath. It was a very bad photograph, apparently an enlargement from a rather poor snap-shot portrait; but, bad as it was, it gave a very vivid presentment of one of the most evil-looking faces that I have ever looked on: a lean, bearded face with high cheekbones, with heavy, frowning brows that overhung deep-shadowed, hollow eye-sockets and an almost grotesquely large nose, thin, curved and sharp, that jutted out like a great predatory beak.

  I stared at the photograph in speechless amazement. At the first glance I had been struck by the perfect way in which this crude portrait realized Marion’s description of the man who had tried to murder her. But that was not all. There was another resemblance which I now perceived with even more astonishment; indeed it was so incredible that the perception of it reduced me to something like stupefaction. I sat for fully a minute with the portrait in my hand and my thoughts surging confusedly in a vain effort to grasp the meaning of this extraordinary likeness; then, happening to glance up at Thorndyke, I found him quietly regarding me with undisguised interest.

  “Well?” he said, as he caught my eye.

  “Who is he?” I demanded, holding up the photograph.

  “That is what I want to know,” he replied. “The photograph came to me without any description. The identity of the subject is unknown. Who do you think he is?”

  “To begin with,” I answered, “he exactly corresponds in appearance with Miss D’Arblay’s description of her would-be murderer. Don’t you think so?”

  “I do,” he replied. “The correspondence seems complete in every detail, so far as I can judge. That was why I secured the photograph. But the actual resemblance will have to be settled by her. I suggest that you take the portrait and let her see it; but you had better not show it to her pointedly for identification. It would be better to put it in some place where she will see it without previous suggestion or preparation. But you said just now ‘to begin with.’ Was there anything else that struck you about this photograph?”