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

by R. Austin Freeman

  “I expect I shall,” I replied. “A wooden floor is dreadfully noisy when one is hammering on a stake, and not very safe when there are red-hot crucibles about.”

  “Yes,” she agreed, “and you can have a mat for your feet when you are sitting at the bench. And now I will leave you and go and see about the tea.”

  Left to myself, I looked around at my new home. The room, though spacious, was undeniably bare, but yet it gave me an impression of comfort. For its bareness was due merely to the absence of superfluities. The empty walls, distempered a pale cream colour, were severe to baldness; but how much better than the usual boarding house walls, covered with staring flowered paper and disfigured with horrible prints or illuminated texts. They, like the empty book-shelves, were ready to receive the personal touches and to become friendly and sympathetic. Of actual necessaries there were more than in many an over-furnished room; a small wardrobe, a good-sized, firm table, a chest of drawers with a looking-glass on it, a small writing chair, a comfortable folding arm-chair, a washing-stand and a sponge bath, besides the book-shelves aforesaid, and a daintily-furnished bed, gave me a foundation of material comfort and convenience on which it would be easy to build and make additions. As I concluded my survey and refreshed myself with a wash, I decided that, whatever the surroundings of the house might be like, its interior seemed to have the makings of a home.

  Nor was I less favourably impressed when I went down stairs. The dining-room, in which I found the ladies assembled, was pervaded by an air of spotless cleanliness with a severity approaching bareness. The absence of superfluous furniture and useless ornaments and bric-a-brac struck me, indeed, as rather odd in a household composed—so far as I knew—entirely of women.

  “I must introduce you to the family,” said Miss Polton, with a pleasant wrinkly smile, “at least those who are at home. There are three more who will come in to dinner. This is Miss Blake, and these ladies are Miss Barnard and Miss Finch.”

  I shook hands with my new comrades—the last being the little lady who had skipped up the stairs so actively with my luggage—and then we sat down to the table, at the head of which Miss Polton presided, and made the tea in a delightful Delft teapot from a brass kettle on which I cast an expert and somewhat disapproving eye, for it was of a blatantly commercial type and quite unworthy of the teapot. At first, conversation was spasmodic and punctuated by considerable pauses. Miss Polton was evidently a silent, self-contained woman, though genial in a quiet, restful way. Miss Finch, too, who sat by me, was quiet and a little shy, speaking rarely but silently plying me with food. Miss Blake, on the other hand, had a restless manner, and, though she spoke little at first, was undisguisedly interested in me, for whenever I looked at her I caught her wide-open, blue eyes fixed on me with an intensity that was almost embarrassing. She was a rather remarkable-looking girl, with a wealth of red-gold hair, a white and pink complexion, and a profile which, with its sharp, projecting chin and retroussé nose, might have been taken direct from one of Miss Burne-Jones’s allegories; indeed, my first glance at her made me think of the “Briar Rose” and the “Golden Stairs.”

  And now, as I caught her intense gaze again and again, I had the feeling that she was wanting to say something to me; and the more so since I thought I detected a certain expectancy in the expression of her neighbour, Miss Barnard. Nor was I mistaken; for, after one of the periodic pauses in the conversation, she leaned over the table towards me and said in low, portentous tones: “Mrs. Otway, I want to ask you a question, if you won’t think me too inquisitive.” Here she paused—and Miss Barnard also paused in the conveyance to her mouth of a large piece of bread and marmalade.

  Miss Polton explained that “Miss Blake was somewhat of a mystic.”

  “Like her famous namesake,” said I.

  “And ancestor,” Miss Blake added, eagerly.

  “Really!” I exclaimed, clutching at this straw; “you are actually a descendant of William Blake? And I dare say you are a great admirer of his works?”

  “I should think she is!” exclaimed Miss Barnard. “You should just see her fashion plates.”

  Recalling Blake’s usual rendering of the human figure and its unadaptability to the conditions of our climate, I secretly resolved to take an early opportunity of examining those fashion plates. Meanwhile, I remarked, “I was thinking of his poems rather than the drawings.”

  “Yes,” said Miss Blake; “though the drawings are very spiritual, too. But to return to my question. You see, I had been looking at your face. It is a face, you know, in which the workings of the subconscious appear, as it were. It’s an extraordinary psychic face, do you know?”

  “Is it?” said I, noting that Miss Barnard had broken out into a slow smile, which she was trying to obliterate with the lump of bread and marmalade.

  “Oh, very. Intensely so.”

  “I don’t suppose your question would be too inquisitive,” I said, guardedly.

  “It isn’t really,” said she. “You know, I have been I have been looking at your face, watching it with deep interest, and I have been hoping that, at last, I had met with a kindred spirit. I do hope—I feel convinced—that I have. I’ve been wondering if you are, as I am, a dweller in the larger world beyond that inhabited by the conscious self, beyond the mere material universe. Is it not so, Mrs. Otway?”

  Now this was a “facer.” As my dear father would have expressed it in his playful fashion, it “knocked me side-ways.” I cast a bewildered glance round the table, and was aware of a very extensive outbreak of tact: Miss Polton was blandly indulgent, her face transformed into a network of amiable wrinkles; Miss Finch was engaged in an intense scrutiny of the bowl of a jam spoon; while Miss Barnard’s feats, with the bread and marmalade, were becoming positively dangerous.

  “I am not sure I understand your question, Miss Blake,” I managed to respond at length.

  “Perhaps I did not put my question very clearly—it is difficult to be very definite when one is speaking of the psychic life; but I was wondering if you had ever had experiences that had made you aware of that larger world beyond the world of mere matter and sense-perception; if you had sometimes felt the thoughts of other minds stealing into your own without the aid of speech or bodily presence and even, perhaps, held converse with those dear to you who, while they have passed out of this little, material world, still share with you the greater world in which soul speaks to soul unhampered by the limitations—”

  The humorous wrinkles had suddenly faded from Miss Polton’s face, leaving it grave and quiet; and now, in a quiet, grave voice, she interposed:

  “I think, Lilith, dear, that Mrs. Otway’s griefs are too new and too real—”

  “I know!” Miss Blake exclaimed, impulsively. “I am an egotistical wretch. It was horrid of me to be so wrapped up in my own interests. I am so sorry; so very, very sorry. Please forgive me, dear Mrs. Otway! Let us talk of something else.”

  “I don’t think we must talk of anything much longer,” said Miss Polton. “We have finished tea and we ought to get on with our work. Besides, Mrs. Otway will want to unpack her things and set her room in order.”

  On this there was a general up-rising. Miss Finch immediately fell to work gathering up the debris and returning the cups and saucers to the tray, while Miss Blake renewed her apologies and expressions of sympathy. Then Miss Polton took possession of me, and, having shown me my workshop—a smallish, well-lighted room, with a paved floor and a large window looking on an unexpectedly pleasant garden—took me upstairs to a box-room in which my personal luggage had been deposited.

  “Supper is at eight o’clock,” said she. “We have made it rather late so that everyone may have a good, long day’s work and all the wanderers may have come home. It is the social event of the day. And now I will leave you to your unpacking.”

  She tripped away up a narrow flight of stairs that opened from the landing, towards what I took to be the attics; from whence presently came a rhythmical “click-clac
k” that I associated with the loom of which Dr. Thorndyke had spoken. Meanwhile, I fell to work on my trunks, with a view to transferring their contents to my room; but I had hardly got them open when Miss Finch appeared at the open door.

  “Can I help you?” she asked. “If I carry some of the things down you won’t have so many journeys.”

  “But aren’t you busy?” I asked in return.

  “Do I look like it? No, I’m lazy this afternoon, but I should like to help you, if you will let me.”

  Of course I was only too glad, and forthwith loaded her with an armful of books, following her with a second consignment. For some time we continued our journeys up and down the stairs with very little said on either side, and gradually my room began to lose its emptiness and severity, and to take on the friendly aspect of an inhabited apartment.

  “It doesn’t look so bad,” said Miss Finch, surveying it critically. “Looks as if someone lived in it. Do you like the wash-stand?”

  I’ve been admiring it. It’s so simple and so tasteful and unusual.”

  “Yes; and yet it is only stained deal, with a few touches of gesso. Phillibar made it—Phyllis Barton, you know. You’ll meet her at supper.”

  “Is she a carpenter?”

  “No; she makes frames for mirrors and pictures; wooden frames decorated with gesso, or compo, or else carved. But she’s very thorough. Does it all herself. Makes up the frames from the plank, makes the compo and the moulds and does the gilding. And she is quite a good wood-worker and carves beautifully.”

  “And does she make a pretty good living?” I asked, bearing Dr. Thorndyke’s observations in mind.

  “She does quite well now, though she had a hard struggle at first. But now she works direct for the artists and gets as much as she can do. You will often see her frames in the exhibitions. The floor-cloth is rather nice, too, isn’t it, though it is only stencilled sacking. You’d be surprised to see how durable it is. The more it is worn, the better it looks—if it is properly done. This is stencilled with a stain. Lilith did it.”

  “Lilith? Is that Miss Blake?”

  “Yes. Her name is really Winifred, but we call her Lilith because she looks as if she had come out of a stained-glass window. You might think that she was a little—well, a little barmy. But she’s awfully clever.”

  “She does fashion-plates, doesn’t she?

  “Yes, poor Lilith! She hates them, but she does them rippingly all the same. She would rather paint pictures or mural decorations or design tapestries, but you’ve got to do what you can sell, you know, if you want to make a living; and Lilith has a little brother whom she keeps at school—an awfully nice little kiddie. She’s a really good sort, you know, though frightfully spooky—planchette, crystal ball and all that sort of tosh; and she thinks she has found a fellow-spook, so you will have to look out.”

  As Miss Finch paused to take another survey, her eye and mine fell upon the wash-stand, or rather on what it supported.

  “I think,” I remarked, “that I shall have to treat myself to some new crockery. That jug and basin are hardly worthy of Miss Barton’s masterpiece.”

  “No; they’re horrid, aren’t they? Regular Whitechapel china-shop stuff. But I believe I’ve got some—I’ll just run up and see.”

  She tripped away up the stairs and presently returned, bearing a basin and pitcher of simple, reddish-buff earthen ware glazed internally with a fine green glaze.

  “They are frightfully crude and coarse,” she said apologetically (and with cheeks several shades redder than the ware), “but they aren’t vulgar. Would you like to have them until you can get something better?”

  “I shall have them a long time, then,” said I. “They are charming—delightful, and they suit the wash-stand perfectly. What a house this is for pottery! I noticed the teapot and the beautiful cups and plates, all so interesting and uncommon. And now you produce these wonderful things like some benevolent enchantress. How do you do it? Do you keep a crystal ball, too?

  Miss Finch laughed and blushed very prettily. “We all do our little bit towards making the home presentable and saving expense. Miss Polton distempered these walls, and Joan Allen painted the woodwork—you’ll like Joan, I think; she paints portraits when she can get them, and fills in her time by doing magazine covers and book-wrappers. We shall expect a diploma work from you, too. You’re a goldsmith, aren’t you?

  It was my turn to laugh and blush as this magnificent title was applied to me. “Not exactly a goldsmith,” I protested. “Say, rather, a very elementary jeweller and metal-worker, or perhaps a coppersmith. And, as we have finished with this room for the present, I had better begin to get my workshop in going order.”

  “And you’ll let me help you with that, too, won’t you?” said Miss Finch, with a wheedling air; and as I gladly accepted her help, she linked her arm in mine and we descended together to the scene of my future labours.

  My experience of various workers has led me to observe that manual skill is a much more generalized quality than is commonly realized. The old saw of the “Jack of all trades and master of none” is entirely misleading; for manual skill acquired in the practice of one art is largely transferable to others. The acquirement of a particular kind of skill results in the establishment of a generally increased manual faculty, so that a person who has completely learned one handicraft is already more than half-way towards the attainment of skill in any other. This fact was impressed upon me as I watched little Miss Finch and noted her extraordinary handiness with probably unfamiliar appliances and her instant comprehension of the uses of things that she had probably never seen before. My two benches—the jeweller’s and the general bench—had fortunately been made in a portable form, and now had to be joined up with their screw-bolts. But my little assistant took this in at a glance, and, before I had half finished unpacking the tool cases, she had the bench-tops up-ended, had sorted out the legs, struts and the appropriate bolts, and was hard at work with the spanner. Yet, as she worked, she kept an alert and interested eye on the tools and appliances that came forth from the cases.

  “What a jolly little muffle!” she exclaimed, as I deposited the small enamel furnace on the floor, pending the erection of its stand; “but won’t it eat up the gas. You’ll have to have your own meter—watch it, too, to see that your earnings don’t all go to the gas company. And what a little duck of an anvil! But what on earth are those things?” pointing to a bundle of body-tools and snarling irons.

  I explained the use of these mysterious appliances and of sundry others and so, with a good deal of gossip, partly personal and partly technical, we worked on until the sound of the first supper-bell sent us to our rooms to make ourselves presentable; by which time the fitting out of the workshop was so far advanced as to make it possible for me to begin work on the morrow.

  The great social function of supper introduced me to the rest of my comrades; Phyllis Barton, who turned out, to my surprise, to be a tiny, frail-looking middle-aged woman of meek aspect—I had pictured her as a large, muscular, boisterous young woman; Joan Allen, who really corresponded somewhat to this description, and whom I detected more than once in the act of inspecting me with one eye closed; and a tall, rather shy girl, by name Edith Palgrave, a scrivener and calligrapher, who, I learned from Miss Finch, wrote, by choice, Church service books and illuminated addresses, but, by necessity, gained her principal livelihood by writing shop-tickets.

  It was a pleasant genial gathering: homely, informal, and yet quite regardful of the indispensable social amenities. What the social class of my companions might have been I could hardly guess. They were all educated women, of good intelligence and pleasant manners, all keenly interested in one another’s doings, but each fully occupied with her own activities. The agreeable impression was conveyed that, in this little human hive, the companionship arising from the community of domestic life tended in no way to hinder a self-contained person like myself from living her own life and pursuing her own interes
ts and satisfactions.

  And so, when, somewhat early, I retired to my room to spend an hour with my books before going to bed, my thoughts turned gratefully to Dr. Thorndyke, and I congratulated myself not a little on having found this quiet anchorage in which to rest after the stormy passages of my troubled life.

  CHAPTER XII

  The Hidden Hand

  I had been settled in my new home about a month when I received a letter from Mr. Jackson. It was principally devoted to a report on business matters concerned with the disposal of my father’s practice and the sale of the surplus furniture and effects, but it contained one passage that gave me considerable food for thought. The passage in question had been added as a postscript, and ran thus:

  “You have probably heard that Mr. Otway has left Maidstone. I fancy things had become rather uncomfortable for him. From what transpired at the inquest, an impression got abroad that he was, to a great extent responsible for your father’s death, and there was consequently a rather strong feeling against him. I don’t know where he has gone, but rumour has it that he has migrated to London.”

  This was, in more than one respect, somewhat disquieting news. I turned it over again and again as I sat at my bench and tried to estimate its significance. The inquest had “gone off quite smoothly,” as Mr. Jackson had expressed it, but it was clear that some, at least, of the persons present had read a meaning into the evidence which the coroner and his jury seemed to have missed. Dr. Thorndyke was one of these; but, as no rumour could be traceable to him, there were evidently others. What did this portend? To Mr. Jackson it meant no more than a local prejudice. To me, conscious of a secret covenant which I had not dared to confide even to Dr. Thorndyke, it conveyed an uneasy feeling that suspicion was abroad, that it might become cumulative, and that, even yet, that covenant might be dragged into the light of day which it would bear so ill.