A silent witness
leave a message or write a note. A message in writing would be
preferable.”
“I don’t know that it’s necessary,” said I. “My name is Jardine, and
if you tell him that I called that will probably be enough.”
The little man gave me a quick, bird-like glance of obviously
heightened interest.
“If you are Dr. Humphrey Jardine,” said he, “I think a few explanatory
words would be acceptable. The Doctor has been extremely uneasy about
you. A short note and an appointment, either here or at the hospital,
would be desirable.”
With this he stepped back, holding the door invitingly open, and I
entered, wondering who the deuce this prim little cathedral dean might
be, with his persuasive manners and his quaintly precise forms of
speech. He placed a chair for me at the table, and, having furnished
me with writing materials, stood a little way off, unobtrusively
examining me as I wrote. I had finished the short letter, closed it up
and addressed it, and was rising to go, when, almost automatically, I
took out my watch and glanced at it. Of course it had stopped.
“Can you tell me the time?” I asked.
My acquaintance drew out his own watch and replied deliberately:
“Seventeen minutes and forty seconds past one.” He paused for a moment
and then added: “I hope, sir, you have not got any water into your
watch.”
“I’m afraid I have,” I replied, rather taken aback by the rapidity of
his diagnosis. “But I’ll just wind it up to make sure.”
“Oh, don’t do that, sir!” he exclaimed. “Allow me to examine it before
you disturb the movement.” He whipped out of his pocket a watchmaker’s
eyeglass, which miraculously glued itself to his eye, and, having
taken a brief glance at the opened watch, produced a minute pocket
screw-driver and a sheet of paper; and, in the twinkling of an eye, as
it seemed to me, the paper was covered with the dismembered structures
which had in their totality formed my timepiece.
“It’s quite a small matter, sir,” was his report, as he rose from his
inspection and pocketed his eye-glass. “Just a speck or two of rust.
If you will take my watch for the present, I will have your own in
going order by the next time you call.”
It seemed an odd transaction; but the little man’s manner, though
quiet, was so decisive that I took his proffered watch, and, affixing
it to my chain, thanked him for his kindness and departed, wondering
if it was possible that this prim, clerical little person could
possibly be the “tame mechanic” of whom Thorndyke had spoken.
Travelling in London was comparatively slow in those days--which,
perhaps, was none the worse for a near and pleasant suburb like
Hampstead; it had turned half-past two when I let myself into my
lodgings with a rather rusty key and almost literally, fell into the
arms of Mrs. Blunt. I feared, for a moment, that she was going to kiss
me. But that was a false alarm. What she actually did was to seize
both my hands and burst into tears with such violence as to cover me
with confusion and cause the servant maid to rise like a domestic, and
highly inquisitive, apparition from the kitchen stairs. I pacified
Mrs. Blunt as well as I could and shook hands heartily with the maid,
who thereupon retired, much gratified, to the underworld, whence
presently issued an odour suggestive of sacrificial rites, not
entirely unconnected with fried onions, and accompanied by an
agreeable hissing sound.
“But wherever have you been all this time?” Mrs. Blunt asked, as she
preceded me up the stairs wiping her eyes, “and why didn’t you send us
a line just to say that you were all right?”
To this question I made a somewhat guarded answer in so far as the
cause of my immersion in the river was concerned; otherwise I gave her
a fairly correct account of my adventures.
“Well, well,” was her comment, “I suppose it was all for the best, but
I do think those sailors might have put you on shore somewhere. Dear
me, what a time it has been. I couldn’t sleep at night for thinking of
you, and what Susan and I have eaten between us wouldn’t have kept a
sparrow alive. And Dr. Thorndyke, too, I’m sure he was very anxious
and worried about you, though he is such a quiet, self-contained man
that you can’t tell what he is thinking of. And Lord; what a lot of
questions he do ask, to be sure!”
“By the way, how did he come to know that I was missing?”
“Why, I told him, of course. When you didn’t come home that
night--which Susan and me sat up for you until three in the morning--I
thought there must be something wrong, you being so regular in your
habits; so next day, the very first thing, I took his card from your
mantelpiece and down I went to his office and told him what had
happened. He came up here that evening to see if you had come home,
and he’s been here every day since to enquire.”
“Has he really?”
“Yes. In a hansom cab. Every single day. And so has the young lady.”
“The young lady!” I exclaimed. “What young lady?”
Mrs. Blunt regarded me with something as nearly approaching a wink as
can be imagined in association with an elderly female of sedate
aspect.
“Now,” she protested slyly, “as if you didn’t know! What young lady
indeed! Why, Miss Vyne, to be sure; and a very sweet young lady she
is, and talked to me just as simple and friendly as if she’d been an
ordinary young woman.”
“How do you know that she isn’t an ordinary young woman?” I asked.
Mrs. Blunt was shocked. “Do you suppose, Mr. Jardine, sir,” she
demanded severely, “that I who have been a head parlour-maid in a
county family where my poor husband was coachman, don’t know a real
gentlewoman when I meet one? You surprise me, sir.”
I apologized hastily and suggested that, as so many kind enquiries had
been made, the least I could do was to call and return thanks without
delay.
“Certainly, sir,” Mrs. Blunt agreed; “but not until you have had your
lunch. It’s a small porterhouse steak,” she added alluringly, being
evidently suspicious of my intentions. The announcement, seconded by
an appetizing whiff from below, reminded me that I was prodigiously
sharp set, having tasted no food since I had come ashore at
Folkestone, and put the grosser physiological needs of the body, for
the moment, in the ascendant. But even as I was devouring the steak
with voracious gusto, my mind occupied itself with plans for a
strategic descent on the abode of the fair Sylvia and with
speculations on the reception I should get; and the noise of water
running into the bath formed a pleasing accompaniment to the final
mouthfuls.
When I had bathed, shaved and attired myself in carefully selected
garments, I set forth, as smart and spruce as the frog that would
a-wooing go--saving the opera hat, which would have been inappropriate
to the occasion. The distance to Sylvia’s house was not great, and a
pair of long and rapidly-moving legs consumed it to such purpose that
it was still quite reasonable calling time when I opened the gate of
“The Hawthorns” and gave a modest pull at the bell. My summons was
answered by a rather foolish-looking maid, by whom I was informed that
Miss Vyne was at home, and when I had given her my name--which she
seemed disposed to confuse with that of a well-known edible fish--she
ushered me down a passage to a room at the back of the house, and,
opening the door, announced me--correctly, I was glad to note;
whereupon I assumed an ingratiating smile and entered.
Now there is nothing more disconcerting than a total failure of
agreement between anticipation and realization. Unconsciously, I had
pictured to myself the easy-mannered, genial Sylvia, seated, perhaps,
at an easel or table, working on one of her pictures, and had prepared
myself for a reception quite simple, friendly and unembarrassing.
Confidently and entirely at my ease, I walked in through the doorway;
and there the pleasant vision faded, leaving me with the smile frozen
on my face, staring in consternation at one of the most appalling old
women that it has ever been my misfortune to encounter.
I am, in general, rather afraid of old women. They are, to my mind, a
rather alarming class of creature; but the present specimen exceeded
my wildest nightmares. It was not merely that she was seated
unnaturally in the exact centre of the room and that she sat with
unhuman immobility, moving no muscle and uttering no sound as I
entered, though that was somewhat embarrassing. It was her strange,
forbidding appearance that utterly shattered my self-possession and
seemed to disturb the very marrow in my bones.
She was a most remarkable-looking person. An immense Roman nose, a mop
of frizzy grey fringe and a lofty surmounting cap or head-dress of
some kind, suggested that monstrous and unreal bird, the helmeted
hornbill; and the bird-like character was heightened by her eyes,
which were small and glittering and set in the midst of a multitude of
radiating wrinkles.
To this most alarming person I made a low bow--and dropped my stick,
of which the maid had neglected to relieve me and for which I had
found no appointed receptacle. As I stooped hastily to pick it up, my
hat slipped from my grasp, and, urged by the devil that possesses
disengaged hats, instantly rolled under a deep ottoman, whence I had
to hook it out with the handle of my stick. I rose, perspiring with
embarrassment, to confront that immovable figure, and found the
glittering eyes fixed on me attentively but without any sign of
expression of human emotion. Haltingly I essayed to stammer out an
explanation of my visit.
“Er--I have--er--called--” Here I paused to collect my ideas and the
old lady watched me stonily without offering any remark; indeed no
comment was needed on a statement so self-evidently true. After a
brief and hideous silence I began again.
“I--er--thought it desirable--er--and in fact necessary
and--er--proper to call--er and--”
Here my ideas again petered out and a horrid silence ensued, amidst
which I heard a still, emotionless voice murmur:
“Yes. And you have accordingly called.”
“Exactly,” I agreed, grasping eagerly at the slenderest straw of
suggestion. “I have called to--er--well, the fact is that my--er--very
remarkable absence seemed to call for some explanation, especially as
certain enquiries--er--”
At this point I stopped suddenly with a horrible doubt as to whether I
was not saying more than was discreet; and the misgiving was
intensified by that chilly, calm voice, framing the question:
“Enquiries made personally?”
Now this was a facer. I seemed to have put my foot in it at the first
lead off. Supposing Sylvia had said nothing about her little visits to
Mrs. Blunt? It would never do to give her away to this inquisitorial
old waxwork. I endeavoured to temporize.
“Well,” I stammered, “not exactly made personally to me.”
“By letter, perhaps?” the voice suggested in the same even, impassive
tone.
“Er--no. Not by letter.”
There was a short embarrassing pause, and then the old lady, as if
summing up the case, said frigidly:
“Not exactly personally and not by letter.”
I was so utterly confounded by her judicial manner, her immovable,
expressionless face and the hypnotic quality of those glittering eyes,
that for the moment I could think of nothing to say.
“Don’t let me interrupt you,” said she after some seconds of agonized
silence on my part; whereupon I pulled myself together and made a
fresh start.
“I should, perhaps, have explained that I have been unavoidably absent
from home for some time, and, as I was unable to communicate with my
friends, I have, I am afraid, caused them some anxiety. It was this
that seemed to make it necessary for me to call and give an account of
myself.”
She pondered awhile on this statement--if a graven image can be said
to ponder--and at length enquired: