“Be constantly on your guard, Gray. You are going to make a bitter enemy of a man who knows no scruples; indeed, you have done so already, and something tells me that he is aware of it. Avoid all solitary or unfrequented places. Keep to main thoroughfares and well-lighted streets, and maintain a diligent lookout for any suspicious appearances. You have said truly that we carry Miss D’Arblay’s life in our hands. But to preserve her life we must preserve our own; which we should probably prefer to do in any case. Don’t get jumpy—I don’t much think you will; but keep your attention alert and your weather eyelid lifting.”
With these encouraging words and a hearty handshake, he let me out and stood watching me as I descended the stairs.
XII
A Dramatic Discovery
About eleven o’clock in the forenoon of the third day after the terrible events of that unforgettable night of the great fog, Marion and I drew up on our bicycles opposite the studio door. She was now outwardly quite recovered, excepting as to her left hand, but I noticed that, as I inserted the key into the door, she cast a quick, nervous glance up and down the road; and as we passed through the lobby, she looked down for one moment at the great bloodstain on the floor and then hastily averted her face.
“Now,” I said, assuming a brisk, cheerful tone, “we must get to work. Mr. Polton will be here in half an hour and we must be ready to put his nose on the grindstone at once.”
“Then your nose will have to go on first,” she replied with a smile, “and so will mine, with two raw apprentices to teach and an important job waiting to be done. But, dear me! what a lot of trouble I am giving!”
“Nothing of the kind, Marion,” I exclaimed; “you are a public benefactor. Polton is delighted at the chance to come here and enlarge his experience, and as for me—”
“Well? As for you?” She looked at me half-shyly, half-mischievously. “Go on. You’ve stopped at the most interesting point.”
“I think I had better not,” said I. “We don’t want the forewoman to get too uppish.”
She laughed softly, and when I had helped her out of her overcoat and rolled up the sleeve of her one serviceable arm, I went out to the lobby to stow away the bicycles and lock the outer door. When I returned, she had got out from the cupboard a large box of flaked gelatine and a massive spouted bucket which she was filling at the sink.
“Hadn’t you better explain to me what we are going to do?” I asked.
“Oh, explanations are of no use,” she replied. “You just do as I tell you and then you will know all about it. This isn’t a school; it’s a workshop. When we have got the gelatine in to soak, I will show you how to make a plaster case.”
“It seems to me,” I retorted, “that my instructress has graduated in the academy of Squeers. ‘W-i-n-d-e-r winder; now go and clean one.’ Isn’t that the method?”
“Apprentices are not allowed to waste time in wrangling,” she rejoined, severely. “Go and put on one of Daddy’s blouses and I will set you to work.”
This practical method of instruction justified itself abundantly. The reasons for each process emerged at once as soon as the process was completed. And it was withal a pleasant method, for there is no comradeship so sympathetic as the comradeship of work; nor any which begets so wholesome and friendly an intimacy. But though there were playful and frivolous interludes—as when the forewoman’s working hand became encrusted with clay and had to be cleansed with a sponge by the apprentice—we worked to such purpose that by the time Mr. Polton was due, the plaster bust (of which a wax replica was to be made) was firmly fixed on the worktable on a clay foundation and surrounded by a carefully levelled platform of clay, in which it was embedded to half its thickness. I had just finished smoothing the surface when there came a knock at the outer door; on which Marion started violently and clutched my arm. But she recovered in a moment, and exclaimed in a tone of vexation:
“How silly I am! Of course, it is Mr. Polton.”
It was. I found him on the threshold in rapt contemplation of the knocker, and looking rather like an archdeacon on tour. He greeted me with a friendly crinkle and I then conducted him into the studio and presented him to Marion, who shook his hand warmly and thanked him so profusely for coming to her aid that he was quite abashed. However, he did not waste time in compliments, but, producing an apron from his handbag, took off his coat, donned the apron, rolled up so sleeves, and beamed inquiringly at the bust.
“We are going to make a plaster case for the gelatine mould, Mr. Polton,” Marion explained, and proceeded to a few preliminary directions, to which the new apprentice listened with respectful attention. But she had hardly finished when he fell to work with a quiet, unhurried facility that filled me with envy. He seemed to know where to find everything. He discovered the wastepaper with which to cover the model to prevent the clay from sticking to it, he pounced on the clay bin at the first shot, and when he had built up the shape for the case, found the plaster-bin, mixing-bowl, and spoon as if he had been born and bred in the workshop, stopping only for a moment to test the condition of the gelatine in the bucket.
“Mr. Polton,” Marion said, after watching him for a while, “you are an impostor—a dreadful impostor. You pretend to come here as an improver, but you really know all
