A silent witness
Sylvia giggled delightedly. “She does look an awful old griffin,
doesn’t she? But it’s all nonsense, you know. She is really a dear old
thing, and as soft as butter.”
“Well,” I said, “she conceals the fact most perfectly.”
“She does. She is a most complete impostor. I’ll tell you a secret,
Dr. Jardine,” Sylvia added in a mysterious whisper, as we shook hands
over the gate; “she trades on her nose. I’ve told her so. Her nose is
her fortune, and she plays it for all it’s worth. Good-bye--or rather,
au revoir! for you’ve promised to come and see us again.”
With a bright little nod she turned and ran up the garden path, still
chuckling softly at her joke; and I wended homewards, very well
pleased with the circumstances of my visit, despite the soul-shaking
incidents with which it had opened.
CHAPTER XIII.
A MYSTERIOUS STRANGER
On the following morning I betook myself to the hospital intending
to call later in the day at Dr. Thorndyke’s chambers; but that visit
turned out to be unnecessary, for, as I ran my eye over the names on
the attendance board in the entrance hall, I saw that Thorndyke was in
the building, although it was not the day on which he lectured. I
found him, as I had expected, in the museum and was greeted with a
hearty grip of the hand and a welcome, the warmth of which gratified
me exceedingly.
“Well, Jardine,” he said, “you’ve given us all a pretty fine shake-up.
I have never been more relieved in my life than I was when my man
Polton gave me your note. But you seem to have had another fairly
close shave. What a fellow you are, to be sure! You seem to be as
tenacious of life as the proverbial cat.”
“So that little archbishop is your man Polton, is he?”
“Yes; and a most remarkable man, Jardine, and simply invaluable to me,
though he ought to be in a very different position. But I think he is
quite happy with me--especially now that he has got your watch to
experiment on. You will see that watch again some day, when he has
rated it to half a second. And meanwhile let us go into the curator’s
room and re-constitute your adventures.”
The curator’s room was empty at the moment; empty, that is to say, so
far as human denizens were concerned. Otherwise it was decidedly full;
the usual wilderness of glass jars, sepulchral slate tanks, bones in
all stages of preparation and unfinished specimens, being supplemented
by that all-pervading, unforgettable odour peculiar to curator’s
rooms, compounded of alcohol and mortality, and suggesting a
necropolis for deceased dipsomaniacs. Thorndyke seated himself on a
well-polished stool by the work-bench, and, motioning me to another,
bade me speak on. Which I did in exhaustive detail; giving him a
minute history of my experiences from the time of my parting from
Sylvia to the present moment, not omitting my encounter with Mrs.
Samway and the clerical gentleman in the train.
He listened to my narrative in his usual silent, attentive fashion,
making no comments and asking no questions until I had finished; when
he cross-examined me on one or two points of detail.
“With regard to Mrs. Samway,” he asked; “did you gather that she was
crossing by the Boulogne boat?”
“I inferred that she was, but she said nothing on the subject.”
He nodded and then asked: “Do I understand that you never saw your
assailant at all?”
“I never got the slightest glimpse of him; in fact I could not say
whether the person who attacked me was a man or a woman excepting that
the obvious strength and the method of attack suggest a man.”
To this he made no reply, but sat awhile absorbed in thought. It was
evident that he was deeply interested in the affair, not only on my
account but by reason of the curious problems that it offered for
solution. Indeed, his next remark was to this effect.
“It is a most singular case, Jardine,” he said. “So much of it is
perfectly clear, and yet so much more is unfathomable mystery. But
just now, the speculative interest is overshadowed by the personal. I
am rather doubtful as to what we ought to do. It almost looks as if
you ought not to be at large.”
“I hope, sir, you don’t suggest shutting me up,” I exclaimed with a
grin.
“That was in my mind,” he answered. “You are evidently in considerable
danger, and you are not as cautious as you ought to be.”
“I shall be mighty cautious after this experience,” I rejoined; “and
you have yourself implied that I have nine lives.”
“Even so,” he retorted, “you have played away a third of them pretty
rapidly. If you are not more careful of the other six, I shall have to
put you somewhere out of harm’s way. Do, for goodness’ sake, Jardine,
keep away from unpopulated places and see that no stranger gets near
enough to have you at a disadvantage.”
I promised him to keep a constant watch for suspicious strangers and
to avoid all solitary neighbourhoods and ill-lighted thoroughfares,
and shortly after this we separated to go our respective ways, he back
to the museum and I to the surgical wards.
For some time after this, the record of my daily life furnishes
nothing but a chronicle of small beer. I had resumed pretty regular
attendance at the hospital, setting forth from my lodgings in the
morning and returning thither as the late afternoon merged into
evening; taking the necessary exercise in the form of the long walk to
and from the hospital, and keeping close indoors at night. It began to
look as though my adventures were at an end and life were settling
down to the old familiar jog trot.
And yet the beer was not quite so small as it looked. Coming events
cast their shadows before them, but often enough those shadows wear a
shape ill-defined and vague, and so creep on unnoticed. Thus it was in
these days of apparent inaction, though even then there were certain
little happenings at which I looked askance. Such an episode occurred
within a few days of my return, and gave me considerable food for
thought. I had climbed on to the yellow ’bus in the Tottenham Court
Road and was seated on the top, smoking my pipe, when, as we passed up
the Hampstead Road, I noticed a woman looking into the window of Mr.
Robinson, the artist’s-colourman. Something familiar or distinctive in
the pose of the figure made me glance a second time; and then I think
my eyes must have grown more and more round with astonishment as the
’bus gradually drew me out of range. For the woman was undoubtedly
Mrs. Samway.
It was really a most surprising affair. This good lady seemed to be
ubiquitous; to fly hither and thither and drop from the clouds as if
she were the possessor of a magic carpet. Apparently she had not gone
to Boulogne after all; or if she had, her stay on the Continent must
have been uncommonly short. But if she had not crossed on the boat,
what was she doing in Folkestone? It was all very well to say that she
had as much right to be in Folkestone as I had. That was true enough,
but it was a lame conclusion and no explanation at all.
It was my custom, as I have said, to walk from my lodgings to the
hospital, a distance of some five miles; but this was practicable only
in fine weather. On wet days I took the tram from the “Duke of St.
Alban’s”; and beguiled the slow journey by reading one of my
text-books and observing the manners and customs of my
fellow-passengers. Such a day was the one that followed the
re-appearance of Mrs. Samway. A persistent drizzle put my morning walk
out of the question and sent me reluctant but resigned to seek the
shelter of the tram, where having settled myself with a volume of
Gould’s “Surgical Diagnosis,” I began to read to the accompaniment of
the monotonous rhythm of the horses’ hoofs and the sleepy jingle of
their bells. From time to time I looked up from my book to take a
glance at the other occupants of the steamy interior, and on each
occasion that I did so, I caught the eye of my opposite neighbour
roving over my person as if taking an inventory of my apparel.
Whenever he caught my eye, he immediately looked away; but the next
time I glanced up I was sure to find him once more engaged in a
leisurely examination of me.
There was nothing remarkable in this. People who sit opposite in a
public vehicle unconsciously regard one another, as I was doing
myself; but when I had met my neighbour’s eye a dozen times or more, I
began to grow annoyed at his persistent inspection; and finally,
shutting up my book, proceeded to retaliate in kind.
This seemed to embarrass him considerably. Avoiding my steady gaze,
his eyes flitted to and fro, passing restlessly from one part of the
vehicle to another; and then it was that my medical eye noted a fact
that gave an intrinsic interest to the inspection. The man had what is
called a nystagmus; that is, a peculiar oscillatory movement of the
eyeball. As his eyes passed quickly from object to object, they did
not both come to rest instantaneously, but the right eye stopped with
a sort of vertical stagger as if the bearings were loose. The
condition is not a very common one, and the one-sided variety is
decidedly rare. It is usually associated with some defect of vision or
habitual strain of the eye-muscles, as in miners’ nystagmus; whence my
discovery naturally led to a further survey and speculation as to the
cause of the condition in the present case.
The man was obviously not a miner. His hands--with a cigarette stain,
as I noticed, on the left middle finger--were much too delicate, and
he had not in any way the appearance of a labourer. Then the spasm
must be due to some defect of eyesight. Yet he was not near-sighted,
for, as we passed a church at some distance, I saw him glance out
through the doorway at the clock and compare it with his watch; and
again, I noticed that he took out his watch with his left hand. Then
perhaps he had a blind eye or unequal vision in the two eyes; this
seemed the most likely explanation; and I had hardly proposed it to
myself when the chance was given to me to verify it. Confused by my
persistent examination of him, my unwilling patient suddenly produced
a newspaper from his pocket and, clapping a pair of pince-nez on his
nose, began to read. Those pince-nez gave me the required information,
for I could see that one glass was strongly convex while the other was
nearly plane.
The question of my friend’s eyesight being disposed of, I began to
debate the significance of that stain of the left middle finger. Was
he left-handed? It did not follow, though it seemed likely; and then I
found myself noting the manner in which he held his paper, until,
becoming suddenly conscious of the absurdity of the whole affair, I
impatiently picked up my book and reverted to the diagnosis of _renal
calculus_. I was becoming, I reflected disparagingly, as inquisitive
as Thorndyke himself; from whom I seemed to have caught some infection
that impelled me thus to concern myself with the trifling
peculiarities of total strangers.
The trivial incident would probably have faded from my recollection
but for another, equally trivial, which occurred a day or two later. I
was returning home by way of Tottenham Court Road and had nearly
reached the crossing at the north end when I suddenly remembered that
I had come to the last of my note-books. The shop at which I obtained
them was in Gower Street, hard by, and as the thought of the books
occurred to me, I turned abruptly and, running across the road, strode
quickly down a by-street that led to the shop.
As I came out into Gower Street I noticed a small, but rapidly
augmenting crowd on the pavement, and, elbowing my way through, found
at its centre a man lying on the ground, writhing in the convulsions
of an epileptic fit. I proceeded to ward off the well-meant attentions
of the usual excited bystanders, who were pulling open his hands and