The First R. Austin Freeman Megapack: 27 Mystery Tales of Dr. Thorndyke & Others

by R. Austin Freeman

  “I am sure I don’t know,” she answered. “I seemed to be paralyzed and idiotic and—” here the laughter began again.

  “Well,” I interrupted cheerfully,” you didn’t get rolled on those tarred nets, so that’s something to be thankful for.”

  This was a rather unlucky shot, for the semblance of facetiousness started a most alarming train of giggles, interrupted by rather loud sobs; but at this point, a new curative influence made itself manifest. Two smack boys halted outside the opening and surveyed her with frank interest and pleased surprise. Simultaneously, an elderly mariner appeared at the door of the sail-loft, grasping a black bottle and a tea-cup, and rather shyly descending the steps, suggested that “perhaps a drop o’ sperits might do the lady good.”

  Mrs. Samway bounced off the steps, her hitherto pale cheeks aflame with anger. “I am making a fool of myself,” she exclaimed. “Let us go away from here.”

  She walked out into the street, and I, having thanked the old gentleman for his most efficacious remedy, followed. As soon as I caught her up, she turned on me quickly and held out her hand. “Good-bye, Dr. Jardine,” she said, “and thank you so very much for risking your life for a—for a wretched giggling woman.”

  “Oh, you’re not going to send me packing like this,” I protested, “when we’ve hardly said good morning. Besides, you’re not fit to be left. But you’re not to begin laughing again,” I added, threateningly, for an ominous twitching of her mouth seemed to herald a relapse, “or I shall go back and get that black bottle.”

  She shook her head impatiently, but without looking at me. “I would rather you went away, Dr. Jardine,” she said in an agitated voice. “I would, really. I wish to be alone. Don’t think me ungracious. I am really most grateful to you, but I would rather you left me now.”

  Of course there was nothing more to be said. She was not really ill or in need of assistance, and probably her instinct was right. Hysteria is not one of those affections which waste their sweetness on the desert air, I shook her hand cordially and, advising her to keep out of the way of stray vans and horses, once more pursued my way towards the town, meditating as I went, on the oddity of the whole affair. It was an astonishing coincidence that I should have run against this woman in this out of the way place. I had left her but a few days since apparently firmly rooted in the Hampstead Road, and now, behold, as I step ashore from the barge, she is almost the first person that I meet. And yet the coincidence, which had evidently hit her as hard as it had me, like most coincidences, tended to disappear on closer inspection. The only really odd feature was my own presence in Folkestone. As to Mrs. Samway, she had probably been sent for by her husband, and was crossing by the boat that was now due to start.

  Her anxiety to get rid of me was more puzzling, until I suddenly remembered my bare head, my crumpled collar and generally raffish and disreputable appearance. The latter was, in fact, at this moment brought to my notice by a man, with whom, in my preoccupation, I collided; who first uttered an impatient exclamation and then, bestowing on me a quick stare of astonishment, muttered a hasty apology and hurried past. The incident emphasized the necessity for some reform, and I mended my pace towards the region of shops in a very ferment of uncomfortable self-consciousness.

  With the purchase of a new hat, a collar, a pair of cuffs, a neck-tie, a pair of gloves and a stick, some faint glimmer of self-respect revived in me. I was even conscious of a temptation to linger in Folkestone and spend a few hours by the sea; but a sense of duty, aided by a large, muddy stain on my coat, finally decided me to return to town at once. Accordingly, having sent off a telegram to my landlady and ascertained that a train left for London in about twenty minutes, I betook myself to the station.

  There were comparatively few people travelling by this particular train; in fact, when I had established myself with the morning paper in the off-side corner seat of a smoking compartment, I began, with an Englishman’s proverbial unsociability, to congratulate myself on the prospect of having the compartment to myself, when my hopes were dashed by the entrance of an elderly clergyman; who not only broke up my solitude, but aggravated the offence by quite unnecessarily seating himself opposite to me. I was almost tempted to move to another corner, for my length of leg gives an added value to space; but it seemed a rude thing to do; and as the train moved off at this moment, I resigned myself to the trifling discomfort.

  My clerical friend was a somewhat uncommon-looking man, with a countenance at once strong and secretive; a rectangular, masterful face, with a bull-like dew-lap and a small, and very sharp, Roman nose. On further inspection, I decided that he was either a High-Church parson or a Roman Catholic priest. His proceedings seemed to favour the latter hypothesis, for the train was barely out of the station before he had whisked out of his pocket an ecclesiastical-looking volume, which he opened at a marked place, and instantly began to read. I watched him with inquisitive interest, for his manner of reading was very singular. There was something habitual, almost mechanical, about it, suggesting an allotted and familiar task, and a lack of concentration that suggested a corresponding lack of novelty in the matter. As he read, his lips moved, and now and again I caught a faint whisper, by which I gathered that he was reading rapidly; but the most singular phenomenon was, that when his eyes strayed out of the carriage window, as they did at frequent intervals, his lips went on sputtering with unabated rapidity. Quite suddenly he appeared to come to the end of a sort of literary measured mile, for even as his lips were still moving, he clapped in the bookmark, shut the volume, and returned it to his pocket with a curious air of businesslike finality.

  As his eyes were no longer occupied with the book, my observations had to be suspended, and my attention was now turned to my own affairs. Putting my hand in my coat pocket for my pipe and pouch, I became aware of a state of confusion in the said pocket which I had already noticed when making my purchases. The fact is, that I had nearly come away from the barge without my portable property. It was only at the last moment that the skipper, remembering the mug, had fetched it hurriedly from the locker and shot its contents bodily into my coat pocket. The present seemed a good opportunity for distributing the various articles among their proper receptacles. Accordingly I turned out the whole pocketful on the seat by my side, and a remarkably miscellaneous collection they formed; comprising knives, pencils, matchbox, keys, the minor implements of my craft, and various other objects, useful and useless, including the little gold reliquary.

  My neighbour opposite was, I think, quite interested in my proceedings, though he kept up a dignified pretence of being entirely unaware of my existence. Only for a while, however. Suddenly he sat up, very wide awake, and slewing his head round, stared with undisguised intentness at my little collection. I guessed at once what it was that had attracted his attention. A cleric would not be thrilled by the sight of a clinical thermometer or an ophthalmoscope. It was the reliquary that had caught his eye. That was an article in his own line of business.

  With deliberate mischief, I left the little bauble exposed to view as I very slowly and methodically conveyed the other things one by one, each to its established pocket. Last of all, I picked up the reliquary and held it irresolutely as if debating where I should stow it. And at this point His Reverence intervened, unable any longer to contain his curiosity. “Zat is a very remargable liddle opchect, sir,” he said in excellent Anglo-German. “Might one bresume to ask vat it’s use is?”

  I handed the reliquary to him and he took it from me with ill-disguised eagerness. “I understand,” said I, “that it is a reliquary. But you probably know more about such things than I do. I haven’t opened it so I can’t say what is inside.”

  He nodded gravely. “Zo! I am glad to hear you zay zat. Brobably zere is inside some holy relic vich ought not to be touched egzepting by bious handts.” He turned the case over, and, putting on a pair of spectacles—which he had not appeared to require for reading—closely scrutinized the inscriptions, and even
the wisp of cord that remained attached to one of the rings. “You zay,” he resumed without raising his eyes, “zat you understandt zat zis is a reliquary. Do you not zen know? Ze berson who gafe it to you, did he not tell you vat it gondained?”

  “It wasn’t given to me at all,” I replied. “In fact, it isn’t properly mine. I picked it up and am merely keeping it until I find the owner.”

  He pondered this statement with a degree of profundity that seemed rather out of proportion to its matter; and he continued to gaze at the reliquary, never once raising his eyes to mine. At length, after a considerable pause and a most unnecessary amount of reflection, he asked: “Might one ask, if you shall bardon my guriosity, vere you found zis liddle opchect?”

  I hesitated before replying. My first, and natural, impulse was to tell him exactly where and under what circumstances I had found the” opchect.” But the way in which my information had been received by the police had made me rather chary of offering confidences; besides which, I had half promised them not to talk about the affair. And, after all, it was no business of this good gentleman’s where I found it. My answer was, therefore, not very explicit. “I picked it up in a lane at Hampstead, near London.”

  “At Hampstead!” he repeated. “Zo! Zat would be a very good blace to find such sings. I mean,” he added, hastily, “zere are many beople in zat blace and some of zem will be of ze old religion.”

  Now, this last remark was such palpable nonsense that it set me speculating on what he had intended to say, for it was obvious that he had altered his mind in the middle of the sentence and completed it with the first words that came to hand. However, as I could read no sense into it at all, I said that “perhaps he was right,” which seemed an eminently safe rejoinder to an unintelligible statement.

  When he had finished his minute examination of the reliquary, he handed it back to me with such evident reluctance that, if it had been mine, I should have been tempted to ask him to accept it. But it was not mine. I was only a trustee. So I made no remark, but watched him as he, very deliberately, took off his spectacles and returned them to their case, looking meanwhile, at the floor with an air of deep abstraction. He appeared to be thinking hard, and I was quite curious as to what his next remark would be. A considerable interval elapsed before he spoke again; but at last the remark came, in the form of a question, and very disappointing it was. “You are not berhaps very much interested in relics and reliquaries?”

  As a matter of fact, I didn’t care two straws for either the one or the other; but there was no need to put it as strongly as that. “We are apt,” I replied, “to find a lack of interest in subjects of which we are ignorant.” (That was a fine sentence. It might have come straight out of Sandford and Merton.

  “Zat is vat I sink, too,” he rejoined. “Ve do not know; ve do not care. But zere is a very eggeilent liddle book vich egsplains all ze gustoms and zeremonies gonnected vid relics of ze zainte. I should like you to read zat book. Vill you bermit me to send you a gobby vich I haf?”

  Of course I said I should be delighted. It was an outrageous falsehood, but what else could I say? “Zen,” said he, “I shall haf great pleasure in zending it to you if you vill kindly tell me how I shall address it.”

  I presented him with my card, which he read very attentively before bestowing it in his pocket-book. “I see,” he remarked, “zat you are a doctor of medicine. It is a fine brofession, if one does not too much vorget ze spiritual life in garing for zat of ze body.”

  In this I acquiesced vaguely, and the conversation drifted into detached commonplaces, finally petering out as we approached Paddock Wood; where my reverend acquaintance bought a newspaper and underwent a total eclipse behind it.

  As soon as the train started again, I took up my own paper; and the very first glance at it gave me a shock of surprise that sent all other matters clean out of my mind. It was an advertisement in the column headed “Personal” that attracted my attention, an advertisement that commenced with the word “Missing,” in large type, and went on to offer Two Hundred Pounds Reward: thus:—

  MISSING. TWO HUNDRED POUNDS REWARD.

  Whereas, on the 14th inst., Dr. Humphrey Jardine disappeared from his home and his usual places of resort; the above reward will be paid to any person who shall give information as to his whereabouts, if alive, or the whereabouts of his body if he is dead. He was last seen at 12.20 p.m. on the above date in the Hampstead Road, and was then walking towards Euston Road. The missing man is about twenty-six years of age; is somewhat over six feet in height; of medium complexion; has brown hair, grey eyes, straight nose and a rather thin face, which is clean-shaved. He was wearing a dark tweed suit, and soft felt hat.

  Information should be given to Hector Brodribb, Esquire, 65, New Square, Lincoln’s Inn, by whom the above reward will be paid.

  Here was a pretty state of affairs: It seemed that while I was placidly taking events as they came; smoking the skipper’s tobacco and bottom-fishing with young Ted; my escapade had been producing somewhere a most almighty splash. I read the advertisement again, with a self-conscious grin, and out of it there arose one or two rather curious questions. In the first place, who the deuce was Hector Brodribb? And what concern was I of his? And how came he to know that I was walking down Hampstead Road at 12.20 on the 14th inst.?

  I felt very little doubt it was actually Thorndyke who was tweaking the strings of the Brodribbian puppet. But even this left the mystery unsolved. For how did Thorndyke know? This was only the fifth day after my disappearance, and it would seem that there had hardly been time for exhaustive enquiries.

  Then another highly interesting fact emerged. The only person who had seen me walk away down Hampstead Road was Sylvia Vyne; whence it followed that Thorndyke, or the mysterious Brodribb, had in some way got into touch with her. And reflecting on this, the mechanism of the enquiry came into view. The connecting-link was, of course, the sketch. Thorndyke had, himself, left the canvas with Mr. Robinson, the artist’s-colourman, and he must have called to enquire if I had collected it. Then, he would have been told of my meeting with Miss Vyne, and as she was a regular customer, Mr. Robinson would have been able to give him her address. It was all perfectly simple, the only remarkable feature being the extraordinary promptitude with which the inquiry had been carried out. Which went to show how much more clearly Thorndyke had realized the danger that surrounded me than I had myself.

  These various reflections gave me full occupation during the remainder of the journey, extending themselves into consideration of how I should act in the immediate future. My first duty was obviously to report myself to Thorndyke without delay; after which, I persuaded myself, it would be highly necessary for me personally to re-assure the fair, and, perhaps, anxious Sylvia. As to how this was to be managed, I was not quite clear, and in spite of the most profound cogitation, I had reached no conclusion when the train rumbled into Charing Cross Station.

  CHAPTER XII

  MISS VYNE

  As I stepped out on to the platform with a valedictory bow to my reverend fellow-passenger, my irresolution came to an end and my duty became clear. I must, in common decency, report myself at once to Thorndyke, seeing that he had been at so much trouble on my account. His card, which he had given me, I had unfortunately—or perhaps fortunately, as it turned out—left on the mantelpiece at my lodgings; but I remembered that the address was King’s Bench Walk and assumed that I should have no difficulty in finding the house. Nor had I, for, as I entered the Temple by the Tudor Street gate—having overshot my mark on the Embankment—I was almost immediately confronted by a fine brick doorway surmounted by a handsome pediment and bearing legibly painted on its jamb, “First pair, Dr. Thorndyke.”

  I ascended the “first pair” of stairs, which brought me to an open oak door, massive and iron-bound, and a closed inner door, on the brass knocker of which I executed a flourish that would have done credit to a Belgravian footman; whereupon the door opened and a small man of sedate a
nd clerical aspect regarded me with an air of mild enquiry. “Is Dr. Thorndyke at home?” I asked. “No, sir. He is at the hospital.”

  “Dr. Jervis?”

  “Is watching a case in the Probate Court. Perhaps you would like to leave a message or write a note. A message in writing would be preferable.”

  “I don’t know that it’s necessary,” said I. “My name is Jardine, and if you tell him that I called that will probably be enough.”

  The little man gave me a quick, bird-like glance of obviously heightened interest. “If you are Dr. Humphrey Jardine,” said he, “I think a few explanatory words would be acceptable. The Doctor has been extremely uneasy about you. A short note and an appointment, either here or at the hospital, would be desirable.”

  With this he stepped back, holding the door invitingly open, and I entered, wondering who the deuce this prim little cathedral dean might be, with his persuasive manners and his quaintly precise forms of speech. He placed a chair for me at the table, and, having furnished me with writing materials, stood a little way off, unobtrusively examining me as I wrote. I had finished the short letter, closed it up and addressed it, and was rising to go, when, almost automatically, I took out my watch and glanced at it. Of course it had stopped. “Can you tell me the time?” I asked.

  My acquaintance drew out his own watch and replied deliberately: “Seventeen minutes and forty seconds past one.” He paused for a moment and then added: “I hope, sir, you have not got any water into your watch.”

  “I’m afraid I have,” I replied, rather taken aback by the rapidity of his diagnosis. “But I’ll just wind it up to make sure.”

  “Oh, don’t do that, sir!” he exclaimed. “Allow me to examine it before you disturb the movement.” He whipped out of his pocket a watchmaker’s eyeglass, which miraculously glued itself to his eye, and, having taken a brief glance at the opened watch, produced a minute pocket screwdriver and a sheet of paper; and, in the twinkling of an eye, as it seemed to me, the paper was covered with the dismembered structures which had in their totality formed my timepiece. “It’s quite a small matter, sir,” was his report, as he rose from his inspection and pocketed his eyeglass. “Just a speck or two of rust. If you will take my watch for the present, I will have your own in going order by the next time you call.”