go rusty. All done with a shadder. No wear and tear about a shadder. And never runs down and never wants winding up. There’s points about a sun-dial.”
“Where did it come from?”
“I took it from the garden of Apsley Manor House, what’s being rebuilt and brought up to date. New owner told me to take it away. Hadn’t any use for sun-dials in these days, he said. More hasn’t anybody else. So I’ve got him on my hands. Wouldn’t like him for your garden, I suppose? He’s going cheap.”
It appeared, on enquiry, that he was going ridiculously cheap. So cheap that Mr. Pottermack closed with the offer there and then,
“You will bring it along and fix it for me?” said he.
“I will, sir. Don’t want much fixing. If you will settle where he is to stand, I’ll bring him and set him up. But you’d better prepare the site. Dig well down into the subsoil and make a level surface. Then I can put a brick foundation and there will be no fear of his settling out of the upright.”
That was how it began. And on the knife-edge of such trivial chances is human destiny balanced. From the mason’s yard Mr. Pottermack sped homeward with springy step, visualizing the ground-plan of his garden as he went; and by the time that he let himself into his house by the front door within the rose-embowered porch he was ready to make a bee-line for the site of his proposed excavation.
He did not, however; for, as he opened the door, he became aware of voices in the adjacent room and his housekeeper came forth to inform him that Mrs. Bellard had called to see him, and was waiting within. Apparently the announcement was not unwelcome, for Mr. Pottermack’s cheerfulness was in nowise clouded thereby. We might even go far as to say that his countenance brightened.
Mrs. Bellard was obviously a widow. That is not to say that she was arrayed in the hideous “weeds” with which, a generation ago, women used to make their persons revolting and insult the memory of the deceased. But she was obviously a widow. More obviously than is usual in these latter days. Nevertheless her sombre raiment was well-considered, tasteful and becoming; indeed the severity of her dress seemed rather to enhance her quiet, dignified comeliness. She greeted Mr. Pottermack with a frank smile, and as they shook hands she said in a singularly pleasant, musical voice:
“It is too bad of me to come worrying you like this. But you said I was to.”
“Of course I did,” was the hearty response; and as the lady produced from her basket a small tin box, he enquired: “Snails?”
“Snails,” she replied; and they both laughed.
“I know,” she continued, “it is very silly of me. I quite believe that, as you say, they die instantaneously when you drop them into boiling water. But I really can’t bring myself to do it.”
“Very natural, too,” said Pottermack. “Why should you, when you have a fellow conchologist to do it for you? I will slaughter them this evening and extract them from their shells, and you shall have their empty residences tomorrow. Shall I leave them at your house?”
“You needn’t trouble to do that. Give them to your housekeeper and I will call for them on my way home from the shops. But I really do impose on you most shamefully. You kill the poor little beasts, you clean out the shells, you find out their names and you leave me nothing to do but stick them on card, write their names under them, and put them in the cabinet. I feel a most horrid impostor when I show them at the Naturalists’ Club as my own specimens.”
“But, my dear Mrs. Bellard,” protested Pottermack, “you are forgetting that you collect them, that you discover them in their secret haunts and drag them out to the light of day. That is the really scientific part of conchology. The preparation of the shells and their identification are mere journeyman’s work. The real naturalist’s job is the field work; and you are a positive genius in finding these minute shells—the pupas and cochlicopas and such like.”
The lady rewarded him with a grateful and gratified smile, and, opening the little box, exhibited her “catch” and recounted some of the thrilling incidents of the chase, to which Pottermack listened with eager interest. And as they chatted, but half seriously, an observer would have noted that they were obviously the best of friends, and might have suspected that the natural history researches were, perhaps, somewhat in the nature of a plausible and convenient pretext for their enjoying a good deal of each other’s society. These little precautions are sometimes necessary in a country district where people take an exaggerated interest in one another and tongues are apt to wag rather freely.
But a close observer would have noted certain other facts. For instance, these two persons were curiously alike in one respect: they both looked older to the casual stranger than they appeared on closer inspection. At a first glance, Mr. Pottermack, spectacled, bearded, and grave, seemed not far short of fifty. But a more critical examination showed that first impression to be erroneous. The quick, easy movements and the supple strength that they implied in the rather small figure, as well as the brightness of the alert, attentive eyes behind the spectacles, suggested that the lines upon the face and the white powdering of the hair owed their existence to something other than the mere effluxion of time. So, too, with Mrs. Bollard. On a chance meeting she would have passed for a well-preserved middle-aged woman. But now, as she chatted smilingly with her friend, the years dropped from her until, despite the white hairs that gleamed among the brown and a faint hint of crow’s-feet, she seemed almost girlish.
But there was something else; something really rather odd. Each of the two cronies seemed to have a way of furtively examining the other. There was nothing unfriendly or suspicious in these regards. Quite the contrary, indeed. But they conveyed a queer impression of curiosity and doubt, differently manifested, however, in each. In Mr. Pottermack’s expression there was something expectant. He had the air of waiting for some anticipated word or action; but the expression vanished instantly when his companion looked in his direction. The widow’s manner was different, but it had the same curious furtive quality. When Pottermack’s attention was occupied, she would cast a steady glance at him; and then the lines would come back upon her forehead, her lips would set, and there would steal across her face a look at once sad, anxious, and puzzled. Especially puzzled. And if the direction of her glance had been followed, it would have been traced more particularly to his profile and his right ear. It is true that both these features were a little unusual. The profile was almost the conventional profile of the Greek sculptors—the nose continuing the line of the forehead with no appreciable notch—a character very seldom seen in real persons. As to the ear, it was a perfectly well-shaped, proportionate ear. It would have been of no interest to Lombroso. But it had one remarkable peculiarity: on its lobule was what doctors call a “diffuse naevus” and common folk describe as a “port-wine mark.” It was quite small, but very distinct; as if the lobule had been dipped into damson juice. Still, it hardly seemed to justify such anxious and puzzled consideration.
“What a dreadful pair of gossips we are!” Mrs. Bellard exclaimed, taking her basket up from the table. “I’ve been here half an hour by the clock, and I know I have been hindering you from some important work. You looked full of business as you came up the garden path.”
“I have been full of business ever since—land and fresh-water mollusca. We have had a most instructive talk.”
“So we have,” she agreed, with a smile. “We are always instructive; especially you. But I must really take myself off now and leave you to your other business.”
Mr. Pottermack held the door open for her and followed her down the hall to the garden path, delaying her for a few moments to fill her basket with roses from the porch. When he had let her out at the gate, he lingered to watch her as she walked away towards
