The Third R. Austin Freeman Megapack. R. Austin Freeman
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quiet!” she repeated. “Peace, perfect peace. That has always been the desire of your heart, hasn’t it? Oh, you old hum bug! Before you had been here a month you would be howling for the sea and someone to fight.” Here her glance lighted on the little wig shop, tucked away in its shady corner, and she drew him eagerly towards it “Let us have a look at these wigs,” said she. “I love wigs. It is a pity they have gone out of fashion for general use. They were such a let-off for bald-headed men. Which one do you like best, Jack? I rather fancy that big one—full-bottomed, I think, is its proper description. It would suit you to a T. It looks a little vacant with no face inside it, but it would have a grand appearance with your old nose sticking out in front. You’d look like the Great Sphinx before they knocked his nose off. Don’t you think you’d look rather well in it?”
“I don’t know that I am particularly keen on wigs,” he replied.
“Unless they are on the green,” she suggested with a roguish smile.
He smiled at her in return, with a surprising softening of the rather rugged face, and then glanced at his watch.
“We mustn’t loiter here staring at these ridiculous wigs,” said he; “or we shall be late. Come along, you little babbler.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” she responded; “come along, it is,” and they resumed their leisurely progress eastward across the court.
“I wonder,” he said, reflectively, “what sort of fellow Thorndyke is. Moderately human, I hope, be cause I want him to understand what I feel about all that he has done for us.”
“I shall want to kiss him,” said she.
“You had better not,” he said, threateningly. “Still, short of that, I shall look to you to let him know how grateful, beyond all words, we are to him.”
“You can trust me, Jack, darling,” she replied, “to make it as clear as I can. When I think of it, I feel like crying. We owe him everything. He is our fairy-godmother.”
“I don’t think, Betty, dear,” said Osmond with a faint grin, “that I should put it to him in exactly those words.”
“I wasn’t going to, you old guffin!” she exclaimed, indignantly. “But it is what I feel. He is a magician. A touch of his magic wand changed us in a moment from a pair of miserable, hopeless wretches into the pet children of Fortune, rich in everything we desired, and with the whole world of happiness at our feet. Oh, the wonder of it! Just think, darling! While you, with that ridiculous bee in your silly old bonnet, were doing everything that you could to make yourself—and me—miserable for life, here was this dry old lawyer, whose very existence we were unaware of, quietly, methodically working away to dig us out of our own entanglements. We can never even thank him properly.”
“No. That’s a fact,” Osmond agreed. “And, in spite of Penfield’s explanations, I can’t in the least understand how he did it.”
“Mr. Penfield admits that he has only a glimmering of an idea himself; but as he has promised to extract a full explanation today, we can afford to bottle up our curiosity a little longer. This seems to be the house; yes, here we are: ‘1st Pair, Dr. John Thorndyke.’”
She tripped up the stairs, followed by Osmond, and on the landing was confronted by the open ‘oak’ and a closed inner door, adorned by a small but brilliantly burnished brass knocker.
“What a dinkie little knocker!” she exclaimed; and forthwith executed upon it a most impressive flourish. Almost instantly the door was opened by a tall, dignified man who greeted the visitors with a smile of quiet geniality.
“I have no need to ask who you are,” he said, as, having saluted the lady, he shook hands with Osmond. “Your resemblance to your mother is quite remarkable.”
“Yes,” replied Osmond, a little mystified, nevertheless. “I was always considered to be very like her. I should like to think that the likeness is not only a superficial one.”
Here he became aware of Mr. Penfield, who had risen from an arm-chair and was advancing, snuff-box in hand, to greet them.
“It is very delightful to meet you both in these chambers,” said he, with an old bow. “A most interesting and significant meeting. Your husband’s name has often been spoken here, Mrs. Osmond, in the days when he was, to us, a mere abstraction of mystery.”
“I’ve no doubt it has,” said Betty, regarding the old lawyer with a mischievous smile, “and I don’t suppose it was spoken of in very complimentary terms. But we are both absolutely bursting with gratitude and we don’t know how to put our feelings into words.”
“There is no occasion for gratitude,” said Thorndyke. “It has been a mutual change of benefits. Your husband has provided us with a problem of the most thrilling interest, which we have had the satisfaction of solving, with the added pleasure of being of some service to you. We are really your debtors.”
“Very kind of you to put it in that way,” said Osmond, with a faint grin. “I seem to have played a sort of Falstaffian part. My deficiency of wit has been the occasion of wit in others.”
“Well, Mr. Osmond,” Thorndyke rejoined, with an appreciative side-glance at the smiling Betty, “you seem to have had wit enough to bring your affairs to a very happy conclusion. But let us draw up to the table. I understand that there are to be mutual explanations presently, so we had better fortify ourselves with nourishment.”
He pressed an electric bell, and, as his guests took their places at the table, the door opened silently and Polton entered with demure gravity to post himself behind Thorndyke’s chair and generally to supervise the proceedings.
Conversation was at first somewhat spasmodic and covered a good deal of mutual and curious inspection. Betty was frankly interested in her surroundings, in the homely simplicity of this queer bachelor household, in which everything seemed to be done so quietly, so smoothly, and so efficiently. But especially was she interested in her host. Of his great intellect and learning she had been readily enough convinced by Mr. Penfield’s enthusiastic accounts of him; but his personality, his distinguished appearance, and his genial, pleasant manners were quite beyond her expectations. It was a pleasure to her to look at him and to reflect that the affectionate gratitude that she must have felt for him, whatever he had been like, had at least been worthily bestowed.
“My husband and I were speaking as we came along,” she said, “of the revolution in our prospects that you created, in an instant, as it seemed, in the twinkling of an eye. One moment our affairs were at a perfectly hopeless deadlock; the next, all our difficulties were smoothed out, the tangle was unravelled, and an assured and happy future lay before us. It looked like nothing short of magic; for, you see, John had done everything that he possibly could to convince all the world that he was guilty.”
“Yes,” said Thorndyke, “that is how it appeared; and that is one of the mysteries which has to be cleared up presently.”
“It shall be,” Osmond promised, “if utterly idiotic, wrong-headed conduct can be made intelligible to reasonable men. But still, I agree with my wife. There is something quite uncanny in the way in which you unravelled this extraordinary tangle. I am a lawyer myself—a pretty poor lawyer, I admit—and I have heard Mr. Penfield’s account of the investigation, but even that has not enlightened me.”
“For a very good reason,” said Mr. Penfield. “I am not enlightened myself. I am, I believe, in possession of most of the material facts. But I have not the special knowledge that is necessary to interpret them. I am still unable to trace the connection between the evidence and the conclusion. Dr. Thorndyke’s methods are, to me, a source of endless wonder.”
“And yet,” said Thorndyke, “they are perfectly normal and simple. They differ from the methods of an orthodox lawyer merely in this: that whereas the issues that I have to try are usually legal issues, the means which I employ are those proper to scientific research.”
“But surely,” Betty interposed, “the purposes of legal and