Dr. Thorndyke Mysteries – Complete Series: 21 Novels & 40 Short Stories (Illustrated Edition) E-Book
R. Austin Freeman
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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Krimi
- Sprache: Englisch
R. Austin Freeman'Äôs "Dr. Thorndyke Mysteries 'Äì Complete Series: 21 Novels & 40 Short Stories" presents a masterful collection that intricately weaves together the elements of forensic science and detective fiction. Written in a style that is both engaging and illuminating, Freeman employs an analytical approach that mirrors the meticulous methodologies of his protagonist, Dr. Thorndyke, a pioneering legal medical expert. This illustrated edition enhances the reading experience, drawing readers into the richly detailed world of Edwardian England, where the interplay between science and mystery unfolds with each turn of the page. R. Austin Freeman, often credited with popularizing the inverted detective story, drew inspiration from his background in medicine and a profound interest in the scientific method. His extensive knowledge of forensic techniques and the legal system imbues the Thorndyke series with authenticity and depth. Freeman'Äôs work not only captivated contemporary audiences but has also influenced later generations of crime writers, establishing a blueprint for the genre that emphasizes logic and deduction. For readers seeking a comprehensive and immersive experience in classic detective fiction, this collection of Dr. Thorndyke'Äôs adventures stands as an essential exploration of mystery and forensic investigation. It is not merely a series of stories; it is a profound commentary on human nature and the complexities of justice, making it a recommended read for enthusiasts of both literature and the sciences.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023
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Dr. Thorndyke Mysteries – Complete Series: 21 Novels & 40 Short Stories (Illustrated Edition)
Table of Contents
Introduction
This single-author collection assembles, in one comprehensive edition, the full cycle of R. Austin Freeman’s Dr. Thorndyke mysteries, uniting twenty-one novels with forty short stories. Spanning from the early twentieth century to the 1940s, it presents the complete arc of Freeman’s seminal forensic detective and the milieu in which he operates. The purpose is both archival and experiential: to preserve the integrity of the series while enabling readers to trace the development of characters, methods, and motifs across decades. By gathering the entire sequence, the volume offers a coherent, authoritative resource for readers, students, and researchers of classic detective fiction.
The contents encompass two principal forms: full-length detective novels and compact short stories. The novels provide extended investigations and courtroom strands, while the short stories deliver concentrated puzzles and case studies. The shorter works include stand-alone pieces as well as curated cycles such as Dr. Thorndyke’s Cases, The Adventures of Dr. Thorndyke, Dr. Thorndyke’s Casebook, The Puzzle Lock, and The Magic Casket, alongside individual tales like Percival Bland’s Proxy and The Missing Mortgagee. As an Illustrated Edition, the volume includes visual material that complements the narratives’ period setting and technical subject matter without supplanting the clarity of Freeman’s prose explanations.
Unifying these works is a distinctive commitment to scientific detection and legal medicine. Dr. John Evelyn Thorndyke, a physician and barrister, exemplifies rigorous method: careful observation, controlled experiment, and scrupulous handling of evidence. Freeman’s emphasis on procedure, reasoning from physical facts, and the measured dismantling of illusion gives the stories a hallmark clarity. The series also showcases early, influential uses of the inverted detective form within the short fiction, demonstrating Freeman’s versatility with structure while maintaining fairness to the reader. Throughout, moral responsibility and professional discipline guide the inquiry, framing crime-solving as an exacting, principled intellectual craft.
Stylistically, the narratives balance lucidity and technical precision with a steady, humane tone. Freeman’s training in medicine informs his descriptions of laboratory practice, pathology, and the interface between science and law. Varied narrative voices and perspectives appear across the series, including accounts by colleagues and associates that broaden the viewpoint on Thorndyke’s methods. Recurring figures such as Dr. Jervis and Mr. Polton contribute companionship, practical ingenuity, and occasional humor, while London’s chambers, laboratories, and riverside districts supply a grounded, vividly realized backdrop. The prose favors exact detail over melodrama, inviting readers to assemble conclusions from disclosed facts.
Taken as a whole, the collection charts the evolution of detective fiction from Edwardian through interwar Britain, mirroring growing public interest in forensic science. Methods such as fingerprint examination, microscopy, and toxicology are integrated into narrative puzzles with pedagogic clarity. Legal procedure and the ethics of evidence handling feature prominently, underscoring the series’ concern with justice as a process rather than a mere outcome. Freeman’s technique rewards attentive reading: clues are presented plainly, experiments are explained, and deductions proceed step by step. This fair-play ethos situates the Thorndyke canon as a cornerstone of rational, scientifically grounded mystery writing.
The arrangement respects the breadth of the canon: novels first, then the complete short-story corpus organized into the author’s established collections. Alternate titles appear where historically used, ensuring clarity for readers encountering variant publication names. The Illustrated Edition enhances period atmosphere and comprehension of technical passages, adding a visual complement to the textual method without intruding on the logic of the cases. By preserving original variety—extended inquiries, compact case studies, and structural experiments—the volume reflects the series’ formal range. It offers multiple entry points while still rewarding sequential reading that highlights continuity of character, method, and milieu.
The enduring significance of these works lies in their synthesis of narrative pleasure with instructional rigor. Freeman’s meticulous staging of evidence, insistence on reproducible demonstrations, and calm narrative voice create a standard for scientific detection that continues to resonate. As a complete series, the collection allows readers to follow the maturation of techniques, the refinement of legal-medical reasoning, and the deepening of relationships within Thorndyke’s circle. It stands as both a definitive reference and an engaging reading experience, preserving a landmark achievement in detective literature and offering a continuous, coherent view of a seminal figure in the genre.
Historical Context
Richard Austin Freeman (1862–1943), a London‑trained physician who served as a colonial medical officer on the Gold Coast from 1887 to 1891, created Dr. John Thorndyke to unite medicine, science, and law within the English capital’s legal quarter. After qualifying at the Middlesex Hospital in the 1880s and collaborating with John James Pitcairn as “Clifford Ashdown,” Freeman launched Thorndyke in 1907 with The Red Thumb Mark. The series’ recurring milieu—the chambers at King’s Bench Walk in the Inner Temple, the Old Bailey, and hospital laboratories—anchors the novels and stories in the professional world that Freeman knew. Thorndyke’s colleagues, notably Dr. Jervis and the ingenious assistant Mr. Polton, embody early twentieth‑century specialism and craftsmanship essential to scientific detection.
The Thorndyke canon unfolds alongside the modernization of British criminal justice. Scotland Yard’s fingerprint bureau opened in 1901 under Sir Edward Henry, Francis Galton’s classification principles having recently gained authority. Karl Landsteiner’s ABO blood grouping (1900), Uhlenhuth’s precipitin test (1901), and Wilhelm Röntgen’s X‑rays (1895) furnished new evidentiary arsenals mirrored in Thorndyke’s microchemical and radiographic methods. The Court of Criminal Appeal (established 1907) institutionalized the role of expert testimony, while Edmond Locard’s Lyon laboratory (1910) and Sir Bernard Spilsbury’s courtroom prominence after the Crippen case (1910) shaped public expectations. Across these works, procedures for chain‑of‑custody, controlled experiments, and demonstrable replication define Freeman’s ideal of the “medical jurist.”
Freeman’s settings preserve a map of London in transition. The Inns of Court—Inner Temple, Middle Temple, and the chancery lanes around Holborn and Fleet Street—form a legal topography for examinations, inquests, and appeals. New Inn, a historic Inn of Chancery near the Strand, disappeared during the Aldwych and Kingsway improvements (1903–1905), a reminder that Thorndyke’s London spans demolition and redevelopment. Coroners’ courts, hospital mortuaries, suburban rail termini, and the Thames foreshore recur as investigative arenas. Telephones, electric light, the Underground, and typewriters register technological modernity, while lodging houses, pawnshops, and dockside warehouses preserve Victorian residues. The series’ procedural rigor is inseparable from this dense, evolving urban infrastructure.
Imperial networks and museum culture feed many Thorndyke problems. Egyptology had a vibrant British presence well before Howard Carter’s Tutankhamun discovery in 1922; Flinders Petrie’s scientific archaeology and collectors’ markets supplied manuscripts, mummies, and amulets that animate The Eye of Osiris (1911). Assyriology, the Moabite Stone (discovered 1868), and Babylonian seals evoke the British Museum’s scholarly orbit, while Chinese carvings and pearls reflect global trade through London’s docks. Maritime law, Merchant Shipping Acts, and long‑haul freighting underwrite tales of mutiny, insurance, and salvage. Freeman’s own colonial medical experience lends credibility to tropical pathology, travel logistics, and the circulation of artifacts that so often complicate identity, provenance, and testimony.
Freeman wrote across the Edwardian era and the Golden Age of Detective Fiction (roughly 1919–1939), publishing in periodicals such as Pearson’s Magazine and with houses including Cassell and Hodder & Stoughton. In 1912 he pioneered the “inverted” detective story in The Case of Oscar Brodski, disclosing the crime first and letting analysis reconstruct it—an innovation echoed across later collections like Dr. Thorndyke’s Casebook (1923), The Puzzle Lock (1925), and The Magic Casket (1927). His procedural emphasis contrasts with Arthur Conan Doyle’s romantic rationalism and aligns, in rigor if not tone, with contemporaries like Freeman Wills Crofts and Dorothy L. Sayers. The series champions fair‑play clues, laboratory demonstration, and legal exactitude.
Shifts in English civil and criminal law inform recurrent Thorndyke themes: contested wills, trusts, insurance, and marital property. The Married Women’s Property Act (1882) and later matrimonial reforms, including the Matrimonial Causes Act (1923) and the 1937 extensions, reframed women’s economic and legal autonomy, affecting motives and remedies in fraud or coercion. The Latin felo de se—historic verdict for suicide—lingers in coronial practice and public discourse into the twentieth century, intersecting with inquests central to Freeman’s plots. Growth in life insurance and small‑saver finance in the 1900s–1930s multiplies documentary evidence—policies, receipts, ledgers—that Thorndyke subjects to microscopic, chemical, and typographic scrutiny, transforming paperwork into decisive physical proof.
War and its aftermath contour the collection’s chronology. World War I (1914–1918) redirected medical expertise toward pathology and triage, sharpening public respect for scientific method evident in postwar novels. The interwar decades brought motorcars, improved forensics, radio communication, and professionalized police–laboratory cooperation. World War II imposed blackouts, rationing, and bomb damage on London; The Jacob Street Mystery (1942) belongs to a city altered by the Blitz (1940–1941), where crime scene interpretation contends with debris and dislocation. Across these phases, Thorndyke’s controlled experiments and didactic courtroom exhibits offer stability, recasting the detective as a bulwark of reason in an era of accelerated technological and social upheaval.
Freeman’s intellectual milieu included the eugenics movement—institutionalized by the Eugenics Education Society (founded 1907)—and he advanced controversial views in Social Decay and Regeneration (1921). Yet the Thorndyke persona stands for due process, humane skepticism, and disciplined empiricism rather than social engineering. The novels and stories, from The Red Thumb Mark (1907) to late works like Mr. Polton Explains (1940) and The Jacob Street Mystery (1942), trace a sustained argument: that justice depends on replicable methods, transparent exhibits, and impartial expert witnesses. Freeman died in 1943 at Gravesend, Kent, leaving a coherent oeuvre in which London’s legal institutions, scientific laboratories, and imperial collections jointly constitute the stage of modern detection.
Synopsis (Selection)
Introduction
Provides background on R. Austin Freeman’s medico-legal detective, the series’ scientific approach to crime, and the framing themes that inform the cases to follow.
MEET DR. THORNDYKE
An overview of Dr. John Thorndyke’s character, method, and circle (including Dr. Jervis and Mr. Polton), outlining his fusion of law and forensic science.
THE RED THUMB MARK
A jewel theft appears conclusively proved by a bloody fingerprint, but Thorndyke tests the evidence’s reliability to uncover an ingenious frame-up.
THE EYE OF OSIRIS (The Vanishing Man)
An Egyptologist’s disappearance and a disputed estate draw Thorndyke into a labyrinth of antiquities, anatomy, and will-law to trace a vanished body.
THE MYSTERY OF 31 NEW INN
A secretive invalid in legal chambers and a suspicious illness hint at identity fraud and inheritance crime, which Thorndyke unravels through poisons and timelines.
A SILENT WITNESS
Chance observations around a sudden death yield mute clues—photographs, pathology, and small material traces—that Thorndyke reads to expose a concealed homicide.
HELEN VARDON’S CONFESSION
After a legal trick drives her into a disastrous marriage and scandal, Helen seeks Thorndyke’s aid as fraud, coercion, and murder threaten her future.
THE CAT’S EYE
A famed gem’s theft leads to murder; microscopic glass, dust, and reconstruction of movements guide Thorndyke to the mechanism and motive.
THE MYSTERY OF ANGELINA FROOD
When a spirited woman vanishes amid forged letters and rumor, Thorndyke disentangles romantic suspicion from the physical evidence to find what became of her.
THE SHADOW OF THE WOLF
A violent crime cloaked in superstition and staged ‘accidents’ challenges Thorndyke to separate folklore from forensic fact and expose a rational scheme.
THE D’ARBLAY MYSTERY
A country-house death and a missing person tangle with questions of identity and succession; Thorndyke follows trace materials and legal nuances to resolution.
A CERTAIN DR. THORNDYKE
A young man’s entanglement with a criminal plot involving identity deception and legal risk brings Thorndyke’s precise medico-legal method to bear.
AS A THIEF IN THE NIGHT
An apparently impossible theft, a sudden death, and a tight timetable are broken open by Thorndyke’s analysis of toolmarks, materials, and alibis.
MR. POTTERMACK’S OVERSIGHT
A respectable man arranges the ‘perfect’ killing of a blackmailer, but a small physical oversight—caught by Thorndyke—unravels his careful plan.
PONTIFEX, SON AND THORNDYKE
Family secrets and inheritance turn on obscured identity; Thorndyke applies legal medicine (including dental and documentary evidence) to set the lineage straight.
WHEN ROGUES FALL OUT (Dr. Thorndyke's Discovery)
A criminal gang’s double-cross escalates to murder; scattered material clues and timing let Thorndyke reconstruct the crime amid mutual betrayals.
DR. THORNDYKE INTERVENES
Thorndyke steps into an ostensibly civil dispute that conceals lethal intent, using legal strategy and forensic proof to protect the intended victim.
FOR THE DEFENCE: DR. THORNDYKE
In a high-stakes murder trial, Thorndyke’s expert testimony and experiments systematically dismantle a persuasive but misleading circumstantial case.
THE PENROSE MYSTERY
A wealthy man’s disappearance, a burnt-out car with a body, and a contested legacy lead Thorndyke to expose a scheme of identity and misdirection.
FELO DE SE (Death at the Inn)
An apparent suicide at a country inn is tested against mechanics and pathology, as Thorndyke distinguishes staged self-destruction from homicide.
THE STONEWARE MONKEY
A shocking double murder turns on timing and a grotesque household object; dust patterns, impressions, and photographs guide Thorndyke’s reconstruction.
MR. POLTON EXPLAINS
Mr. Polton narrates his life and a buried crime from his past; Thorndyke’s science and law resolve the residual danger that resurfaces.
THE JACOB STREET MYSTERY (The Unconscious Witness)
A lodger unknowingly observes a key event in a murder; Thorndyke teases out unconscious observations and environmental traces to reveal the killer.
Early Standalone Short Stories: Percival Bland’s Proxy; The Missing Mortgagee
Two compact cases of legal-financial deception and disappearance—proxy arrangements, vanishing debtors, and maritime or identity fraud—solved by Thorndyke’s material and documentary analysis.
DR. THORNDYKE’S CASES (collection)
Early showcase of methods across varied puzzles—footprint patterns, duplicate keys, ciphers, exotic jewels, rare metals, and medical forensics—emphasizing experiment and close observation.
THE ADVENTURES OF DR. THORNDYKE (collection)
Stories ranging from jewel-theft reconstructions to poisonings and crimes at sea, with Thorndyke demonstrating step-by-step deduction and courtroom-ready proof.
DR. THORNDYKE’S CASEBOOK (collection)
Wide-ranging mysteries—distinctive footprints, archaeological curios, transatlantic puzzles, stolen bullion, and cremation ploys—each resolved through precise science and legal insight.
THE PUZZLE LOCK (collection)
Later tales centered on cryptic mechanisms, alibis, seals, and staged phenomena (from sand-hill clues to ‘apparitions’), with rational explanations grounded in physical evidence.
THE MAGIC CASKET (collection)
Mature-period cases featuring forensic botany, alibi-breaking, misdirection, and retrospective gleanings, where Thorndyke’s calm method strips sensational puzzles to their proofs.
Dr. Thorndyke Mysteries – Complete Series: 21 Novels & 40 Short Stories (Illustrated Edition)
Introduction
MEET DR. THORNDYKE
My subject is Dr. John Thorndyke, the hero or central character of most of my detective stories. So I'll give you a short account of his real origin; of the way in which he did in fact come into existence.
To discover the origin of John Thorndyke I have to reach back into the past for at least fifty years, to the time when I was a medical student preparing for my final examination. For reasons which I need not go into I gave rather special attention to the legal aspects of medicine and the medical aspects of law. And as I read my text-books, and especially the illustrative cases, I was profoundly impressed by their dramatic quality. Medical jurisprudence deals with the human body in its relation to all kinds of legal problems. Thus its subject matter includes all sorts of crime against the person and all sorts of violent death and bodily injury: hanging, drowning, poisons and their effects, problems of suicide and homicide, of personal identity and survivorship, and a host of other problems of the highest dramatic possibilities, though not always quite presentable for the purposes of fiction. And the reported cases which were given in illustration were often crime stories of the most thrilling interest. Cases of disputed identity such as the Tichbourne Case, famous poisoning cases such as the Rugeley Case and that of Madeline Smith, cases of mysterious disappearance or the detection of long-forgotten crimes such as that of Eugene Aram; all these, described and analysed with strict scientific accuracy, formed the matter of Medical Jurisprudence which thrilled me as I read and made an indelible impression.
But it produced no immediate results. I had to pass my examinations and get my diploma, and then look out for the means of earning my living. So all this curious lore was put away for the time being in the pigeon-holes of my mind—which Dr. Freud would call the Unconscious—not forgotten, but ready to come to the surface when the need for it should arise. And there it reposed for some twenty years, until failing health compelled me to abandon medical practice and take to literature as a profession.
It was then that my old studies recurred to my mind. A fellow doctor, Conan Doyle, had made a brilliant and well-deserved success by the creation of the immortal Sherlock Holmes. Considering that achievement, I asked myself whether it might not be possible to devise a detective story of a slightly different kind; one based on the science of Medical Jurisprudence, in which, by the sacrifice of a certain amount of dramatic effect, one could keep entirely within the facts of real life, with nothing fictitious excepting the persons and the events. I came to the conclusion that it was, and began to turn the idea over in my mind.
But I think that the influence which finally determined the character of my detective stories, and incidentally the character of John Thorndyke, operated when I was working at the Westminster Ophthalmic Hospital. There I used to take the patients into the dark room, examine their eyes with the ophthalmoscope, estimate the errors of refraction, and construct an experimental pair of spectacles to correct those errors. When a perfect correction had been arrived at, the formula for it was embodied in a prescription which was sent to the optician who made the permanent spectacles.
Now when I was writing those prescriptions it was borne in on me that in many cases, especially the more complex, the formula for the spectacles, and consequently the spectacles themselves, furnished an infallible record of personal identity. If, for instance, such a pair of spectacles should have been found in a railway carriage, and the maker of those spectacles could be found, there would be practically conclusive evidence that a particular person had travelled by that train. About that time I drafted out a story based on a pair of spectacles, which was published some years later under the title of The Mystery of 31 New Inn, and the construction of that story determined, as I have said, not only the general character of my future work but of the hero around whom the plots were to be woven. But that story remained for some years in cold storage. My first published detective novel was The Red Thumb-mark, and in that book we may consider that John Thorndyke was born. And in passing on to describe him I may as well explain how and why he came to be the kind of person that he is.
I may begin by saying that he was not modelled after any real person. He was deliberately created to play a certain part, and the idea that was in my mind was that he should be such a person as would be likely and suitable to occupy such a position in real life. As he was to be a medico-legal expert, he had to be a doctor and a fully trained lawyer. On the physical side I endowed him with every kind of natural advantage. He is exceptionally tall, strong, and athletic because those qualities are useful in his vocation. For the same reason he has acute eyesight and hearing and considerable general manual skill, as every doctor ought to have. In appearance he is handsome and of an imposing presence, with a symmetrical face of the classical type and a Grecian nose. And here I may remark that his distinguished appearance is not merely a concession to my personal taste but is also a protest against the monsters of ugliness whom some detective writers have evolved.
These are quite opposed to natural truth. In real life a first-class man of any kind usually tends to be a good-looking man.
Mentally, Thorndyke is quite normal. He has no gifts of intuition or other supernormal mental qualities. He is just a highly intellectual man of great and varied knowledge with exceptionally acute reasoning powers and endowed with that invaluable asset, a scientific imagination (by a scientific imagination I mean that special faculty which marks the born investigator; the capacity to perceive the essential nature of a problem before the detailed evidence comes into sight). But he arrives at his conclusions by ordinary reasoning, which the reader can follow when he has been supplied with the facts; though the intricacy of the train of reasoning may at times call for an exposition at the end of the investigation.
Thorndyke has no eccentricities or oddities which might detract from the dignity of an eminent professional man, unless one excepts an unnatural liking for Trichinopoly cheroots. In manner he is quiet, reserved and self-contained, and rather markedly secretive, but of a kindly nature, though not sentimental, and addicted to occasional touches of dry humour. That is how Thorndyke appears to me.
As to his age. When he made his first bow to the reading public from the doorway of Number 4 King's Bench Walk he was between thirty-five and forty. As that was thirty years ago, he should now be over sixty-five. But he isn't. If I have to let him "grow old along with me" I need not saddle him with the infirmities of age, and I can (in his case) put the brake on the passing years. Probably he is not more than fifty after all!
Now a few words as to how Thorndyke goes to work. His methods are rather different from those of the detectives of the Sherlock Holmes school. They are more technical and more specialized. He is an investigator of crime but he is not a detective. The technique of Scotland Yard would be neither suitable nor possible to him. He is a medico-legal expert, and his methods are those of medico-legal science. In the investigation of a crime there are two entirely different methods of approach. One consists in the careful and laborious examination of a vast mass of small and commonplace detail: inquiring into the movements of suspected and other persons; interrogating witnesses and checking their statements particularly as to times and places; tracing missing persons, and so forth—the aim being to accumulate a great body of circumstantial evidence which will ultimately disclose the solution of the problem. It is an admirable method, as the success of our police proves, and it is used with brilliant effect by at least one of our contemporary detective writers. But it is essentially a police method.
The other method consists in the search for some fact of high evidential value which can be demonstrated by physical methods and which constitutes conclusive proof of some important point. This method also is used by the police in suitable cases. Finger-prints are examples of this kind of evidence, and another instance is furnished by the Gutteridge murder. Here the microscopical examination of a cartridge-case proved conclusively that the murder had been committed with a particular revolver; a fact which incriminated the owner of that revolver and led to his conviction.
This is Thorndyke's procedure. It consists in the interrogation of things rather than persons; of the ascertainment of physical facts which can be made visible to eyes other than his own. And the facts which he seeks tend to be those which are apparent only to the trained eye of the medical practitioner.
I feel that I ought to say a few words about Thorndyke's two satellites, Jervis and Polton. As to the former, he is just the traditional narrator proper to this type of story. Some of my readers have complained that Dr. Jervis is rather slow in the uptake. But that is precisely his function. He is the expert misunderstander. His job is to observe and record all the facts, and to fail completely to perceive their significance. Thereby he gives the reader all the necessary information, and he affords Thorndyke the opportunity to expound its bearing on the case.
Polton is in a slightly different category. Although he is not drawn from any real person, he is associated in my mind with two actual individuals. One is a Mr. Pollard, who was the laboratory assistant in the hospital museum when I was a student, and who gave me many a valuable tip in matters of technique, and who, I hope, is still to the good. The other was a watch-and clock-maker of the name of Parsons—familiarly known as Uncle Parsons—who had premises in a basement near the Royal Exchange, and who was a man of boundless ingenuity and technical resource. Both of these I regard as collateral relatives, so to speak, of Nathaniel Polton. But his personality is not like either. His crinkly countenance is strictly his own copyright.
To return to Thorndyke, his rather technical methods have, for the purposes of fiction, advantages and disadvantages. The advantage is that his facts are demonstrably true, and often they are intrinsically interesting. The disadvantage is that they are frequently not matters of common knowledge, so that the reader may fail to recognize them or grasp their significance until they are explained. But this is the case with all classes of fiction. There is no type of character or story that can be made sympathetic and acceptable to every kind of reader. The personal equation affects the reading as well as the writing of a story.
Novels
THE RED THUMB MARK
My Learned Brother
"Conflagratam An° 1677. Fabricatam An° 1698. Richardo Powell Armiger Thesaurar." The words, set in four panels, which formed a frieze beneath the pediment of a fine brick portico, summarised the history of one of the tall houses at the upper end of King's Bench Walk and as I, somewhat absently, read over the inscription, my attention was divided between admiration of the exquisitely finished carved brickwork and the quiet dignity of the building, and an effort to reconstitute the dead and gone Richard Powell, and the stirring times in which he played his part.
I was about to turn away when the empty frame of the portico became occupied by a figure, and one so appropriate, in its wig and obsolete habiliments, to the old-world surroundings that it seemed to complete the picture, and I lingered idly to look at it. The barrister had halted in the doorway to turn over a sheaf of papers that he held in his hand, and, as he replaced the red tape which bound them together, he looked up and our eyes met. For a moment we regarded one another with the incurious gaze that casual strangers bestow on one another; then there was a flash of mutual recognition; the impassive and rather severe face of the lawyer softened into a genial smile, and the figure, detaching itself from its frame, came down the steps with a hand extended in cordial greeting.
"My dear Jervis," he exclaimed, as we clasped hands warmly, "this is a great and delightful surprise. How often have I thought of my old comrade and wondered if I should ever see him again, and lo! here he is, thrown up on the sounding beach of the Inner Temple, like the proverbial bread cast upon the waters."
"Your surprise, Thorndyke, is nothing to mine," I replied, "for your bread has at least returned as bread; whereas I am in the position of a man who, having cast his bread upon the waters, sees it return in the form of a buttered muffin or a Bath bun. I left a respectable medical practitioner and I find him transformed into a bewigged and begowned limb of the law."
Thorndyke laughed at the comparison.
"Liken not your old friend unto a Bath bun," said he. "Say, rather, that you left him a chrysalis and come back to find him a butterfly. But the change is not so great as you think. Hippocrates is only hiding under the gown of Solon, as you will understand when I explain my metamorphosis; and that I will do this very evening, if you have no engagement."
"I am one of the unemployed at present," I said, "and quite at your service."
"Then come round to my chambers at seven," said Thorndyke, "and we will have a chop and a pint of claret together and exchange autobiographies. I am due in court in a few minutes."
"Do you reside within that noble old portico?" I asked.
"No," replied Thorndyke. "I often wish I did. It would add several inches to one's stature to feel that the mouth of one's burrow was graced with a Latin inscription for admiring strangers to ponder over. No; my chambers are some doors further down—number 6A"—and he turned to point out the house as we crossed towards Crown Office Row.
At the top of Middle Temple Lane we parted, Thorndyke taking his way with fluttering gown towards the Law Courts, while I directed my steps westward towards Adam Street, the chosen haunt of the medical agent.
The soft-voiced bell of the Temple clock was telling out the hour of seven in muffled accents (as though it apologised for breaking the studious silence) as I emerged from the archway of Mitre Court and turned into King's Bench Walk.
The paved footway was empty save for a single figure, pacing slowly before the doorway of number 6A, in which, though the wig had now given place to a felt hat and the gown to a jacket, I had no difficulty in recognising my friend.
"Punctual to the moment, as of old," said he, meeting me half-way. "What a blessed virtue is punctuality, even in small things. I have just been taking the air in Fountain Court, and will now introduce you to my chambers. Here is my humble retreat."
We passed in through the common entrance and ascended the stone stairs to the first floor, where we were confronted by a massive door, above which my friend's name was written in white letters.
"Rather a forbidding exterior," remarked Thorndyke, as he inserted the latchkey, "but it is homely enough inside."
The heavy door swung outwards and disclosed a baize-covered inner door, which Thorndyke pushed open and held for me to pass in.
"You will find my chambers an odd mixture," said Thorndyke, "for they combine the attractions of an office, a museum, a laboratory and a workshop."
"And a restaurant," added a small, elderly man, who was decanting a bottle of claret by means of a glass syphon: "you forgot that, sir."
"Yes, I forgot that, Polton," said Thorndyke, "but I see you have not." He glanced towards a small table that had been placed near the fire and set out with the requisites for our meal.
"Tell me," said Thorndyke, as we made the initial onslaught on the products of Polton's culinary experiments, "what has been happening to you since you left the hospital six years ago?"
"My story is soon told," I answered, somewhat bitterly. "It is not an uncommon one. My funds ran out, as you know, rather unexpectedly. When I had paid my examination and registration fees the coffer was absolutely empty, and though, no doubt, a medical diploma contains—to use Johnson's phrase—the potentiality of wealth beyond the dreams of avarice, there is a vast difference in practice between the potential and the actual. I have, in fact, been earning a subsistence, sometimes as an assistant, sometimes as a locum tenens. Just now I've got no work to do, and so have entered my name on Turcival's list of eligibles."
Thorndyke pursed up his lips and frowned.
"It's a wicked shame, Jervis," said he presently, "that a man of your abilities and scientific acquirements should be frittering away his time on odd jobs like some half-qualified wastrel."
"It is," I agreed. "My merits are grossly undervalued by a stiff-necked and obtuse generation. But what would you have, my learned brother? If poverty steps behind you and claps the occulting bushel over your thirty thousand candle-power luminary, your brilliancy is apt to be obscured."
"Yes, I suppose that is so," grunted Thorndyke, and he remained for a time in deep thought.
"And now," said I, "let us have your promised explanation. I am positively frizzling with curiosity to know what chain of circumstances has converted John Evelyn Thorndyke from a medical practitioner into a luminary of the law."
Thorndyke smiled indulgently.
"The fact is," said he, "that no such transformation has occurred. John Evelyn Thorndyke is still a medical practitioner."
"What, in a wig and gown!" I exclaimed.
"Yes, a mere sheep in wolf's clothing," he replied. "I will tell you how it has come about. After you left the hospital, six years ago, I stayed on, taking up any small appointments that were going—assistant demonstrator—or curatorships and such like—hung about the chemical and physical laboratories, the museum and post mortem room, and meanwhile took my M.D. and D.Sc. Then I got called to the bar in the hope of getting a coronership, but soon after this, old Stedman retired unexpectedly—you remember Stedman, the lecturer on medical jurisprudence—and I put in for the vacant post. Rather to my surprise, I was appointed lecturer, whereupon I dismissed the coronership from my mind, took my present chambers and sat down to wait for anything that might come."
"And what has come?" I asked.
"Why, a very curious assortment of miscellaneous practice," he replied. "At first I only got an occasional analysis in a doubtful poisoning case, but, by degrees, my sphere of influence has extended until it now includes all cases in which a special knowledge of medicine or physical science can be brought to bear upon law."
"But you plead in court, I observe," said I.
"Very seldom," he replied. "More usually I appear in the character of that bête noir of judges and counsel—the scientific witness. But in most instances I do not appear at all; I merely direct investigations, arrange and analyse the results, and prime the counsel with facts and suggestions for cross-examination."
"A good deal more interesting than acting as understudy for an absent g.p.," said I, a little enviously. "But you deserve to succeed, for you were always a deuce of a worker, to say nothing of your capabilities."
"Yes, I worked hard," replied Thorndyke, "and I work hard still; but I have my hours of labour and my hours of leisure, unlike you poor devils of general practitioners, who are liable to be dragged away from the dinner table or roused out of your first sleep by—confound it all! who can that be?"
For at this moment, as a sort of commentary on his self-congratulation, there came a smart rapping at the outer door.
"Must see who it is, I suppose," he continued, "though one expects people to accept the hint of a closed oak."
He strode across the room and flung open the door with an air of by no means gracious inquiry.
"It's rather late for a business call," said an apologetic voice outside, "but my client was anxious to see you without delay."
"Come in, Mr. Lawley," said Thorndyke, rather stiffly, and, as he held the door open, the two visitors entered. They were both men—one middle-aged, rather foxy in appearance and of a typically legal aspect, and the other a fine, handsome young fellow of very prepossessing exterior, though at present rather pale and wild-looking, and evidently in a state of profound agitation.
"I am afraid," said the latter, with a glance at me and the dinner table, "that our visit—for which I am alone responsible—is a most unseasonable one. If we are really inconveniencing you, Dr. Thorndyke, pray tell us, and my business must wait."
Thorndyke had cast a keen and curious glance at the young man, and he now replied in a much more genial tone—
"I take it that your business is of a kind that will not wait, and as to inconveniencing us, why, my friend and I are both doctors, and, as you are aware, no doctor expects to call any part of the twenty-four hours his own unreservedly."
I had risen on the entrance of the two strangers, and now proposed to take a walk on the Embankment and return later, but the young man interrupted me.
"Pray don't go away on my account," he said. "The facts that I am about to lay before Dr. Thorndyke will be known to all the world by this time to-morrow, so there is no occasion for any show of secrecy."
"In that case," said Thorndyke, "let us draw our chairs up to the fire and fall to business forthwith. We had just finished our dinner and were waiting for the coffee, which I hear my man bringing down at this moment."
We accordingly drew up our chairs, and when Polton had set the coffee on the table and retired, the lawyer plunged into the matter without preamble.
The Suspect
"I had better," said he, "give you a general outline of the case as it presents itself to the legal mind, and then my client, Mr. Reuben Hornby, can fill in the details if necessary, and answer any questions that you may wish to put to him.
"Mr. Reuben occupies a position of trust in the business of his uncle, John Hornby, who is a gold and silver refiner and dealer in precious metals generally. There is a certain amount of outside assay work carried on in the establishment, but the main business consists in the testing and refining of samples of gold sent from certain mines in South Africa.
"About five years ago Mr. Reuben and his cousin Walter—another nephew of John Hornby—left school, and both were articled to their uncle, with the view to their ultimately becoming partners in the house; and they have remained with him ever since, occupying, as I have said, positions of considerable responsibility.
"And now for a few words as to how business is conducted in Mr. Hornby's establishment. The samples of gold are handed over at the docks to some accredited representative of the firm—generally either Mr. Reuben or Mr. Walter—who has been despatched to meet the ship, and conveyed either to the bank or to the works according to circumstances. Of course every effort is made to have as little gold as possible on the premises, and the bars are always removed to the bank at the earliest opportunity; but it happens unavoidably that samples of considerable value have often to remain on the premises all night, and so the works are furnished with a large and powerful safe or strong room for their reception. This safe is situated in the private office under the eye of the principal, and, as an additional precaution, the caretaker, who acts as night-watchman, occupies a room directly over the office, and patrols the building periodically through the night.
"Now a very strange thing has occurred with regard to this safe. It happens that one of Mr. Hornby's customers in South Africa is interested in a diamond mine, and, although transactions in precious stones form no part of the business of the house, he has, from time to time, sent parcels of rough diamonds addressed to Mr. Hornby, to be either deposited in the bank or handed on to the diamond brokers.
"A fortnight ago Mr. Hornby was advised that a parcel of stones had been despatched by the Elmina Castle, and it appeared that the parcel was an unusually large one and contained stones of exceptional size and value. Under these circumstances Mr. Reuben was sent down to the docks at an early hour in the hope the ship might arrive in time for the stones to be lodged in the bank at once. Unfortunately, however, this was not the case, and the diamonds had to be taken to the works and locked up in the safe."
"Who placed them in the safe?" asked Thorndyke.
"Mr. Hornby himself, to whom Mr. Reuben delivered up the package on his return from the docks."
"Yes," said Thorndyke, "and what happened next?"
"Well, on the following morning, when the safe was opened, the diamonds had disappeared."
"Had the place been broken into?" asked Thorndyke.
"No. The place was all locked up as usual, and the caretaker, who had made his accustomed rounds, had heard nothing, and the safe was, outwardly, quite undisturbed. It had evidently been opened with keys and locked again after the stones were removed."
"And in whose custody were the keys of the safe?" inquired Thorndyke.
"Mr. Hornby usually kept the keys himself, but, on occasions, when he was absent from the office, he handed them over to one of his nephews—whichever happened to be in charge at the time. But on this occasion the keys did not go out of his custody from the time when he locked up the safe, after depositing the diamonds in it, to the time when it was opened by him on the following morning."
"And was there anything that tended to throw suspicion upon anyone?" asked Thorndyke.
"Why, yes," said Mr. Lawley, with an uncomfortable glance at his client, "unfortunately there was. It seemed that the person who abstracted the diamonds must have cut or scratched his thumb or finger in some way, for there were two drops of blood on the bottom of the safe and one or two bloody smears on a piece of paper, and, in addition, a remarkably clear imprint of a thumb."
"Also in blood?" asked Thorndyke.
"Yes. The thumb had apparently been put down on one of the drops and then, while still wet with blood, had been pressed on the paper in taking hold of it or otherwise."
"Well, and what next?"
"Well," said the lawyer, fidgeting in his chair, "to make a long story short, the thumb-print has been identified as that of Mr. Reuben Hornby."
"Ha!" exclaimed Thorndyke. "The plot thickens with a vengeance. I had better jot down a few notes before you proceed any further."
He took from a drawer a small paper-covered notebook, on the cover of which he wrote "Reuben Hornby," and then, laying the book open on a blotting-pad, which he rested on his knee, he made a few brief notes.
"Now," he said, when he had finished, "with reference to this thumb-print. There is no doubt, I suppose, as to the identification?"
"None whatever," replied Mr. Lawley. "The Scotland Yard people, of course, took possession of the paper, which was handed to the director of the finger-print department for examination and comparison with those in their collection. The report of the experts is that the thumb-print does not agree with any of the thumb-prints of criminals in their possession; that it is a very peculiar one, inasmuch as the ridge-pattern on the bulb of the thumb—which is a remarkably distinct and characteristic one—is crossed by the scar of a deep cut, rendering identification easy and infallible; that it agrees in every respect with the thumb-print of Mr. Reuben Hornby, and is, in fact, his thumb-print beyond any possible doubt."
"Is there any possibility," asked Thorndyke, "that the paper bearing the thumb-print could have been introduced by any person?"
"No," answered the lawyer. "It is quite impossible. The paper on which the mark was found was a leaf from Mr. Hornby's memorandum block. He had pencilled on it some particulars relating to the diamonds, and laid it on the parcel before he closed up the safe."
"Was anyone present when Mr. Hornby opened the safe in the morning?" asked Thorndyke.
"No, he was alone," answered the lawyer. "He saw at a glance that the diamonds were missing, and then he observed the paper with the thumb-mark on it, on which he closed and locked the safe and sent for the police."
"Is it not rather odd that the thief did not notice the thumb-mark, since it was so distinct and conspicuous?"
"No, I think not," answered Mr. Lawley. "The paper was lying face downwards on the bottom of the safe, and it was only when he picked it up and turned it over that Mr. Hornby discovered the thumb-print. Apparently the thief had taken hold of the parcel, with the paper on it, and the paper had afterwards dropped off and fallen with the marked surface downwards—probably when the parcel was transferred to the other hand."
"You mentioned," said Thorndyke, "that the experts at Scotland Yard have identified this thumb-mark as that of Mr. Reuben Hornby. May I ask how they came to have the opportunity of making the comparison?"
"Ah!" said Mr. Lawley. "Thereby hangs a very curious tale of coincidences. The police, of course, when they found that there was so simple a means of identification as a thumb-mark, wished to take thumb-prints of all the employees in the works; but this Mr. Hornby refused to sanction—rather quixotically, as it seems to me—saying that he would not allow his nephews to be subjected to such an indignity. Now it was, naturally, these nephews in whom the police were chiefly interested, seeing that they alone had had the handling of the keys, and considerable pressure was brought to bear upon Mr. Hornby to have the thumb-prints taken.
"However, he was obdurate, scouting the idea of any suspicion attaching to either of the gentlemen in whom he had reposed such complete confidence and whom he had known all their lives, and so the matter would probably have remained a mystery but for a very odd circumstance.
"You may have seen on the bookstalls and in shop windows an appliance called a 'Thumbograph,' or some such name, consisting of a small book of blank paper for collecting the thumb-prints of one's friends, together with an inking pad."
"I have seen those devices of the Evil One," said Thorndyke, "in fact, I have one, which I bought at Charing Cross Station."
"Well, it seems that some months ago Mrs. Hornby, the wife of John Hornby, purchased one of these toys—"
"As a matter of fact," interrupted Reuben, "it was my cousin Walter who bought the thing and gave it to her."
"Well, that is not material," said Mr. Lawley (though I observed that Thorndyke made a note of the fact in his book); "at any rate, Mrs. Hornby became possessed of one of these appliances and proceeded to fill it with the thumb-prints of her friends, including her two nephews. Now it happened that the detective in charge of this case called yesterday at Mr. Hornby's house when the latter was absent from home, and took the opportunity of urging her to induce her husband to consent to have the thumb-prints of her nephews taken for the inspection of the experts at Scotland Yard. He pointed out that the procedure was really necessary, not only in the interests of justice but in the interests of the young men themselves, who were regarded with considerable suspicion by the police, which suspicion would be completely removed if it could be shown by actual comparison that the thumb-print could not have been made by either of them. Moreover, it seemed that both the young men had expressed their willingness to have the test applied, but had been forbidden by their uncle. Then Mrs. Hornby had a brilliant idea. She suddenly remembered the 'Thumbograph,' and thinking to set the question at rest once for all, fetched the little book and showed it to the detective. It contained the prints of both thumbs of Mr. Reuben (among others), and, as the detective had with him a photograph of the incriminating mark, the comparison was made then and there; and you may imagine Mrs. Hornby's horror and amazement when it was made clear that the print of her nephew Reuben's left thumb corresponded in every particular with the thumb-print that was found in the safe.
"At this juncture Mr. Hornby arrived on the scene and was, of course, overwhelmed with consternation at the turn events had taken. He would have liked to let the matter drop and make good the loss of the diamonds out of his own funds, but, as that would have amounted practically to compounding a felony, he had no choice but to prosecute. As a result, a warrant was issued for the arrest of Mr. Reuben, and was executed this morning, and my client was taken forthwith to Bow Street and charged with the robbery."
"Was any evidence taken?" asked Thorndyke.
"No. Only evidence of arrest. The prisoner is remanded for a week, bail having been accepted in two sureties of five hundred pounds each."
Thorndyke was silent for a space after the conclusion of the narrative. Like me, he was evidently not agreeably impressed by the lawyer's manner, which seemed to take his client's guilt for granted, a position indeed not entirely without excuse having regard to the circumstances of the case.
"What have you advised your client to do?" Thorndyke asked presently.
"I have recommended him to plead guilty and throw himself on the clemency of the court as a first offender. You must see for yourself that there is no defence possible."
The young man flushed crimson, but made no remark.
"But let us be clear how we stand," said Thorndyke. "Are we defending an innocent man or are we endeavouring to obtain a light sentence for a man who admits that he is guilty?"
Mr. Lawley shrugged his shoulders.
"That question can be best answered by our client himself," said he.
Thorndyke directed an inquiring glance at Reuben Hornby, remarking—
"You are not called upon to incriminate yourself in any way, Mr. Hornby, but I must know what position you intend to adopt."
Here I again proposed to withdraw, but Reuben interrupted me.
"There is no need for you to go away, Dr. Jervis," he said. "My position is that I did not commit this robbery and that I know nothing whatever about it or about the thumb-print that was found in the safe. I do not, of course, expect you to believe me in the face of the overwhelming evidence against me, but I do, nevertheless, declare in the most solemn manner before God, that I am absolutely innocent of this crime and have no knowledge of it whatever."
"Then I take it that you did not plead 'guilty'?" said Thorndyke.
"Certainly not; and I never will," replied Reuben hotly.
"You would not be the first innocent man, by very many, who has entered that plea," remarked Mr. Lawley. "It is often the best policy, when the defence is hopelessly weak."
"It is a policy that will not be adopted by me," rejoined Reuben. "I may be, and probably shall be, convicted and sentenced, but I shall continue to maintain my innocence, whatever happens. Do you think," he added, turning to Thorndyke, "that you can undertake my defence on that assumption?"
"It is the only assumption on which I should agree to undertake the case," replied Thorndyke.
"And—if I may ask the question—" pursued Reuben anxiously, "do you find it possible to conceive that I may really be innocent?"
"Certainly I do," Thorndyke replied, on which I observed Mr. Lawley's eyebrows rise perceptibly. "I am a man of facts, not an advocate, and if I found it impossible to entertain the hypothesis of your innocence, I should not be willing to expend time and energy in searching for evidence to prove it. Nevertheless," he continued, seeing the light of hope break out on the face of the unfortunate young man, "I must impress upon you that the case presents enormous difficulties and that we must be prepared to find them insuperable in spite of all our efforts."
"I expect nothing but a conviction," replied Reuben in a calm and resolute voice, "and can face it like a man if only you do not take my guilt for granted, but give me a chance, no matter how small, of making a defence."
"Everything shall be done that I am capable of doing," said Thorndyke; "that I can promise you. The long odds against us are themselves a spur to endeavour, as far as I am concerned. And now, let me ask you, have you any cuts or scratches on your fingers?"
Reuben Hornby held out both his hands for my colleague's inspection, and I noticed that they were powerful and shapely, like the hands of a skilled craftsman, though faultlessly kept. Thorndyke set on the table a large condenser such as is used for microscopic work, and taking his client's hand, brought the bright spot of light to bear on each finger in succession, examining their tips and the parts around the nails with the aid of a pocket lens.
"A fine, capable hand, this," said he, regarding the member approvingly, as he finished his examination, "but I don't perceive any trace of a scar on either the right or left. Will you go over them, Jervis? The robbery took place a fortnight ago, so there has been time for a small cut or scratch to heal and disappear entirely. Still, the matter is worth noting."
He handed me the lens and I scrutinised every part of each hand without being able to detect the faintest trace of any recent wound.
"There is one other matter that must be attended to before you go," said Thorndyke, pressing the electric bell-push by his chair. "I will take one or two prints of the left thumb for my own information."
In response to the summons, Polton made his appearance from some lair unknown to me, but presumably the laboratory, and, having received his instructions, retired, and presently returned carrying a box, which he laid on the table. From this receptacle Thorndyke drew forth a bright copper plate mounted on a slab of hard wood, a small printer's roller, a tube of finger-print ink, and a number of cards with very white and rather glazed surfaces.
"Now, Mr. Hornby," said he, "your hands, I see, are beyond criticism as to cleanliness, but we will, nevertheless, give the thumb a final polish."
Accordingly he proceeded to brush the bulb of the thumb with a well-soaked badger-hair nail-brush, and, having rinsed it in water, dried it with a silk handkerchief, and gave it a final rub on a piece of chamois leather. The thumb having been thus prepared, he squeezed out a drop of the thick ink on to the copper plate and spread it out with the roller, testing the condition of the film from time to time by touching the plate with the tip of his finger and taking an impression on one of the cards.
When the ink had been rolled out to the requisite thinness, he took Reuben's hand and pressed the thumb lightly but firmly on to the inked plate; then, transferring the thumb to one of the cards, which he directed me to hold steady on the table, he repeated the pressure, when there was left on the card a beautifully sharp and clear impression of the bulb of the thumb, the tiny papillary ridges being shown with microscopic distinctness, and even the mouths of the sweat glands, which appeared as rows of little white dots on the black lines of the ridges. This manoeuvre was repeated a dozen times on two of the cards, each of which thus received six impressions. Thorndyke then took one or two rolled prints, i.e. prints produced by rolling the thumb first on the inked slab and then on the card, by which means a much larger portion of the surface of the thumb was displayed in a single print.
"And now," said Thorndyke, "that we may be furnished with all the necessary means of comparison, we will take an impression in blood."
The thumb was accordingly cleansed and dried afresh, when Thorndyke, having pricked his own thumb with a needle, squeezed out a good-sized drop of blood on to a card.
"There," said he, with a smile, as he spread the drop out with the needle into a little shallow pool, "it is not every lawyer who is willing to shed his blood in the interests of his client."
He proceeded to make a dozen prints as before on two cards, writing a number with his pencil opposite each print as he made it.
"We are now," said he, as he finally cleansed his client's thumb, "furnished with the material for a preliminary investigation, and if you will now give me your address, Mr. Hornby, we may consider our business concluded for the present. I must apologise to you, Mr. Lawley, for having detained you so long with these experiments."
The lawyer had, in fact, been viewing the proceedings with hardly concealed impatience, and he now rose with evident relief that they were at an end.
"I have been highly interested," he said mendaciously, "though I confess I do not quite fathom your intentions. And, by the way, I should like to have a few words with you on another matter, if Mr. Reuben would not mind waiting for me in the square just a few minutes."
"Not at all," said Reuben, who was, I perceived, in no way deceived by the lawyer's pretence. "Don't hurry on my account; my time is my own—at present." He held out his hand to Thorndyke, who grasped it cordially.
"Good-bye, Mr. Hornby," said the latter. "Do not be unreasonably sanguine, but at the same time, do not lose heart. Keep your wits about you and let me know at once if anything occurs to you that may have a bearing on the case."
The young man then took his leave, and, as the door closed after him, Mr. Lawley turned towards Thorndyke.
"I thought I had better have a word with you alone," he said, "just to hear what line you propose to take up, for I confess that your attitude has puzzled me completely."
"What line would you propose?" asked Thorndyke.
"Well," said the lawyer, with a shrug of his shoulders, "the position seems to be this: our young friend has stolen a parcel of diamonds and has been found out; at least, that is how the matter presents itself to me."
"That is not how it presents itself to me," said Thorndyke drily. "He may have taken the diamonds or he may not. I have no means of judging until I have sifted the evidence and acquired a few more facts. This I hope to do in the course of the next day or two, and I suggest that we postpone the consideration of our plan of campaign until I have seen what line of defence it is possible to adopt."
