I looked at her with a sort of admiring surprise. A quiet, gentle girl as I believed her to be at ordinary times, now, with her flushed cheeks, her flashing eyes and ominous brows, she reminded me of one of the heroines of the French Revolution. Her grief seemed to be merged in a longing for vengeance.
While she had been speaking Miss Boler had kept up a running accompaniment in a deep, humming bass. I could not catch the words—if there were any—but was aware only of a low, continuous bourdon. She now said with grim decision:
“God will not let him escape. He shall pay the debt to the uttermost farthing.” Then, with sudden fierceness, she added: “If I should ever meet with him I could kill him with my own hand.”
After this both women relapsed into silence, which I was loth to interrupt. The circumstances were too tragic for conversation. When we reached their gate Miss D’Arblay held out her hand and once again thanked me for my help and sympathy.
“I have done nothing,” said I, “that any stranger would not have done, and I deserve no thanks. But I should like to think that you will look on me as a friend, and if you should need any help will let me have the privilege of being of use to you.”
“I look on you as a friend already,” she replied; “and I hope you will come and see us sometimes—when we have settled down to our new conditions of life.”
As Miss Boler seemed to confirm this invitation, I thanked them both and took my leave, glad to think that I had now a recognized status as a friend and might pursue a project which had formed in my mind even before we had left the courthouse.
The evidence of the murder, which had fallen like a thunderbolt on us all, had a special significance for me; for I knew that Dr. Thorndyke was behind this discovery, though to what extent I could not judge. The medical witness was an obviously capable man, and it might be that he would have made the discovery without assistance. But a needle-puncture in the back is a very inconspicuous thing. Ninety-nine doctors in a hundred would almost certainly have overlooked it, especially in the case of a body apparently “found drowned,” and seeming to call for no special examination beyond the search for gross injuries. The revelation was very characteristic of Thorndyke’s methods and principles. It illustrated in a most striking manner the truth which he was never tired of insisting on: that it is never safe to accept obvious appearances, and that every case, no matter how apparently simple and commonplace, should be approached with suspicion and scepticism and subjected to the most rigorous scrutiny. That was precisely what had been done in this case; and thereby an obvious suicide had been resolved into a cunningly planned and skilfully executed murder. It was quite possible that, but for my visit to Thorndyke, those cunning plans would have succeeded and the murderer have secured the cover of a verdict of “Death by misadventure” or “Suicide while temporarily insane.” At any rate, the results had justified me in invoking Dr. Thorndyke’s aid; and the question now arose whether it would be possible to retain him for the further investigation of the case.
This was the project that had occurred to me as I listened to the evidence and realized how completely the unknown murderer had covered up his tracks. But there were difficulties. Thorndyke might consider such an investigation outside his province. Again, the costs involved might be on a scale entirely beyond my means. The only thing to be done was to call on Thorndyke and hear what he had to say on the subject, and this I determined to do on the first opportunity. And having formed this resolution, I made my way back by the shortest route to Mecklenburgh Square, where the evening consultations were now nearly due.
IV
Mr. Bendelow
There are certain districts in London the appearance of which conveys to the observer the impression that the houses, and indeed, the entire streets, have been picked up secondhand. There is in this aspect a grey, colourless, mouldy quality, reminiscent, not of the antique shop, but rather of the marine store dealers; a quality which even communicates itself to the inhabitants, so that one gathers the impression that the whole neighbourhood was taken as a going concern.
It was on such a district that I found myself looking down from the top of an omnibus a few days after the inquest (Dr. Cornish’s brougham being at the moment under repairs and his horse “out to grass” during the slack season), being bound for a street in the neighbourhood of Hoxton—Market Street by name—which abutted, as I had noticed when making out my route, on the Regent’s Canal. The said route I had written out, and now, in the intervals of my surveys of the unlovely prospect, I divided my attention between it and the note which had summoned me to these remote regions.
Concerning the latter I was somewhat curious, for the envelope was addressed, not to Dr. Cornish, but to “Dr. Stephen Gray.” This was really quite an odd circumstance. Either the writer knew me personally or was aware that I was acting as locum tenens for Cornish. But the name—James Morris—was unknown to me, and a careful inspection of the index of the ledger had failed to bring to light anyone answering to the description. So Mr. Morris was presumably a stranger to my principal also. The note, which had been left by hand in the morning, requested me to call “as early in the forenoon as possible,” which seemed to hint at some degree of urgency. Naturally, as a young practitioner, I speculated with interest, not entirely unmingled with anxiety, on the possible nature of the
