seized the opportunity with thankfulness and replied—
“You might set me down at King’s Cross if it is not delaying you;” and giving the word to the cabman, I took my place by her side as the cab started and a black-painted prison van turned into the courtyard with its freight of squalid misery.
“I don’t think Reuben was very pleased to see me,” Miss Gibson remarked presently, “but I shall come again all the same. It is a duty I owe both to him and to myself.”
I felt that I ought to endeavour to dissuade her, but the reflection that her visits must almost of necessity involve my companionship, enfeebled my will. I was fast approaching a state of infatuation.
“I was so thankful,” she continued, “that you prepared me. It was a horrible experience to see the poor fellow caged like a wild beast, with that dreadful label hanging from his coat; but it would have been overwhelming if I had not known what to expect.”
As we proceeded, her spirits revived somewhat, a circumstance that she graciously ascribed to the enlivening influence of my society; and I then told her of the mishap that had befallen my colleague.
“What a terrible thing!” she exclaimed, with evidently unaffected concern. “It is the merest chance that he was not killed on the spot. Is he much hurt? And would he mind, do you think, if I called to inquire after him?”
I said that I was sure he would be delighted (being, as a matter of fact, entirely indifferent as to his sentiments on the subject in my delight at the proposal), and when I stepped down from the cab at King’s Cross to pursue my way homewards, there already opened out before me the prospect of the renewal of this bitter-sweet and all too dangerous companionship on the morrow.
CHAPTER X
POLTON IS MYSTIFIED
A couple of days sufficed to prove that Thorndyke’s mishap was not to be productive of any permanent ill consequences; his wounds progressed favourably and he was able to resume his ordinary avocations.
Miss Gibson’s visit—but why should I speak of her in these formal terms? To me, when I thought of her, which I did only too often, she was Juliet, with perhaps an adjective thrown in; and as Juliet I shall henceforth speak of her (but without the adjective) in this narrative, wherein nothing has been kept back from the reader—Juliet’s visit, then, had been a great success, for my colleague was really pleased by the attention, and displayed a quiet geniality that filled our visitor with delight.
He talked a good deal of Reuben, and I could see that he was endeavouring to settle in his own mind the vexed question of her relations with and sentiments towards our unfortunate client; but what conclusions he arrived at I was unable to discover, for he was by no means communicative after she had left. Nor was there any repetition of the visit—greatly to my regret—since, as I have said, he was able, in a day or two, to resume his ordinary mode of life.
The first evidence I had of his renewed activity appeared when I returned to the chambers at about eleven o’clock in the morning, to find Polton hovering dejectedly about the sitting-room, apparently perpetrating as near an approach to a “spring clean” as could be permitted in a bachelor establishment.
“Hallo, Polton!” I exclaimed, “have you contrived to tear yourself away from the laboratory for an hour or two?”
“No, sir,” he answered gloomily. “The laboratory has torn itself away from me.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“The Doctor has shut himself in and locked the door, and he says I am not to disturb him. It will be a cold lunch today.”
“What is he doing in there?” I inquired.
“Ah!” said Polton, “that’s just what I should like to know. I’m fair eaten up with curiosity. He is making some experiments in connection with some of his cases, and when the Doctor locks himself in to make experiments, something interesting generally follows. I should like to know what it is this time.”
“I suppose there is a keyhole in the laboratory door?” I suggested, with a grin.
“Sir!” he exclaimed indignantly. “Dr. Jervis, I am surprised at you.” Then, perceiving my facetious intent, he smiled also and added: “But there is a keyhole if you’d like to try it, though I’ll wager the Doctor would see more of you than you would of him.”
“You are mighty secret about your doings, you and the Doctor,” I said.
“Yes,” he answered. “You see, it’s a queer trade this of the Doctor’s, and there are some queer secrets in it. Now, for instance, what do you make of this?”
He produced from his pocket a leather case, whence he took a piece of paper which he handed to me. On it was a neatly executed drawing of what looked like one of a set of chessmen, with the dimensions written on the margin.
“It looks like a pawn—one of the Staunton pattern,” I said.
“Just what I thought; but it isn’t. I’ve got to make twenty-four of them, and what the Doctor is going to do with them fairly beats me.”
“Perhaps he has invented some new game,” I suggested facetiously.
“He is always inventing new games and playing them mostly in courts of law, and then the other players generally lose. But this is a puzzler, and no mistake. Twenty-four of these to be turned up in the best-seasoned boxwood! What can they be for? Something to do with the experiments he is carrying on upstairs at this very moment, I expect.” He shook his head, and, having carefully returned the drawing to his pocket-book, said, in a solemn tone—“Sir, there are times when the Doctor makes me fairly dance with curiosity. And this is one of them.”
Although not afflicted with a curiosity so acute as that of Polton, I found myself speculating at intervals on the nature of my colleague’s experiments and the purpose of the singular little objects which he had ordered to be made; but I was unacquainted with any of the cases on which he was engaged, excepting that of Reuben Hornby, and with the latter I was quite unable to connect a set of twenty-four boxwood chessmen. Moreover, on this day, I was to accompany Juliet on her second visit to Holloway, and that circumstance gave me abundant mental occupation of another kind.
At lunch, Thorndyke was animated and talkative but not communicative. He “had some work in the laboratory that he must do himself,” he said, but gave no hint as to its nature; and as soon as our meal was finished, he returned to his labours, leaving me to pace up and down the walk, listening with ridiculous eagerness for the sound of the hansom that was to transport me to the regions of the blest, and—incidentally—to Holloway Prison.
When I returned to the Temple, the sitting-room was empty and hideously neat, as the result of Polton’s spring-cleaning efforts. My colleague was evidently still at work in the laboratory, and, from the circumstance that the tea-things were set out on the table and a kettle of water placed in readiness on the gas-ring by the fireplace, I gathered that Polton also was full of business and anxious not to be disturbed.
Accordingly, I lit the gas and made my tea, enlivening my solitude by turning over in my mind the events of the afternoon.
Juliet had been charming—as she always was—frank, friendly and unaffectedly pleased to have my companionship. She evidently liked me and did not disguise the fact—why should she indeed?—but
