The First R. Austin Freeman Megapack: 27 Mystery Tales of Dr. Thorndyke & Others

by R. Austin Freeman

  From my friend’s chambers I went across to the Appeal Court, in which I was that day engaged. I lunched with the Q.C. with whom I was associated, and when the court rose I went home with him to dine and talk over the case.

  I remained with him until past eleven o’clock. When I emerged from his chambers in Paper Buildings, I perceived three persons—two men and a woman—sauntering slowly up towards Crown Office Row and looking about them with the leisurely air of sightseers. One of the men, who carried a violin-case, was apparently acting as showman, and, as I overtook them, I recognised him as a crony of mine, a law student named Leyland. I would have passed with a flourish of the hat, but he hailed me to stop.

  “I say, Mitchell, can you tell us where it was that Lamb lived with his sister? Wasn’t it Crown Office Row?”

  “No; he was born in Crown Office Row, but the chambers where he and Mary Lamb lived were in Mitre Court Buildings.”

  “Then,” said Leyland, addressing the lady, “you will have to come and see the place by daylight. The gate is shut now. We must get Mr. Mitchell to show us round the old place some day; he knows every stone of it and who lived in every house from the time of the Knights Templars downward. You wouldn’t mind, Mitchell, would you? Miss Bonnington is rabid on historic associations.”

  “I should be proud and delighted,” said I.

  “It is a dear old place,” said Miss Bonnington; “so peaceful and monastic. How I should love to live here! But I suppose there are no Eves in this Paradise.”

  “No,” I answered. “It is given up to Adam and the serpent; especially the serpent.”

  Miss Bonnington laughed: and a very pretty, musical laugh it was, and very pleasant to listen to. Indeed, she impressed me as a very charming young lady; sweet-faced and soft-spoken, though quite self possessed.

  “I didn’t know you played the fiddle, Leyland,” said I, glancing at the case in his hand.

  “I don’t,” he replied. “This is Miss Bonnington’s. I groan aloud on the ’cello, and Mr. Bonnington hammers the ‘well-tempered clavier.’ We’ve been having a little revival meeting in my chambers.”

  Thus we chatted as we strolled quietly up the untenanted walk. My appointment as future cicerone seemed to have served as an informal introduction, and when we came to the corner of Fig Tree Court, we halted to gossip awhile before saying good-night.

  “What a very extraordinary old gentleman that was!” Miss Bonnington said suddenly. “And how inquisitively he looked at us.”

  We all turned to follow her gaze, but the old gentle man had already passed into the gloom of the narrow court and was little more than a bulky shadow.

  “He’s a deuce of a size,” said Leyland. “Looks like a turtle walking upright.”

  “Yes,” said Miss Bonnington, “but did you see how oddly he was dressed? He seemed to have a cocked hat and gaiters like a bishop’s. Would he be a judge, do you think?”

  I laughed at the idea of one of Her Majesty’s judges going abroad in a cocked hat and gaiters, and delicately suggested an optical illusion.

  “Well,” said Leyland, “you’ll be able to see for yourself, presently. He has turned into your entry. I expect he has come to offer you a brief.”

  “Then,” said I, “I mustn’t keep him waiting. Remember, that whenever you are disposed for a historic prowl round the Temple, I am at your service.”

  I shook hands with my newly-made friends and Leyland and betook myself to number 21, Fig Tree Court, on the second floor of which my chambers were situated. Slowly ascending the stone stairs, I speculated on the unknown visitor of quaint aspect, until I at length reached my own landing. But there was nobody waiting for me. Evidently Leyland had mistaken the entry, for mine were the only residential chambers in the building.

  I let myself in with my key, shut the heavy “oak,” and was about to take off my overcoat when my attention was arrested by a very strange circumstance.

  There was a light in my sitting-room.

  It was very singular and rather disturbing. I stood in the tiny lobby gazing at the streak of light—the door stood slightly ajar—and wondering if it could possibly be a burglar, though burglary was practically unknown in the Temple, and listening intently. There were no sounds of movement or, indeed, of any kind except a faint, continuous creak, curiously like the squeak of a quill pen. I stepped forward on tiptoe, softly pushed open the door, and looked into the room.

  What I saw astonished me beyond words. Seated at my open bureau, writing rapidly with one of the quill pens which I, with an old-fashioned lawyer’s conservatism, still use, was a man, apparently a stranger. As his back was turned to me I could not see what he was like, excepting that he was excessively bulky, and that he wore a grey wig. This latter fact puzzled me greatly. It is not customary for counsel to wear their wigs in chambers at midnight, and I could see, moreover, that he was not in his gown. It was very remarkable.

  I watched him for awhile in speechless astonishment, a huge, unreal silhouette against the light of the single wax candle that I always keep in the antique silver candlestick on my bureau. He wrote on steadily with a loud chirping of the quill, turned the paper over and continued on the other side, and finally signed his name with an elaborate flourish, as I gathered from a series of more vehement squeaks. Then he laid the pen in the rack and helped himself to a pinch of snuff.

  At this point I thought it expedient to attract his attention, and, to that end, coughed gently. But he took no notice. I coughed again a little louder, but still he appeared unaware of my presence. And then suddenly it flashed upon me that I must have got into the wrong chambers. I do not know why I thought this, for there was my own bureau with my own candlestick on it, there was the parcel of books at the stranger’s elbow, and there was the high back of my Queen Anne chair cutting across the tail of his wig. But the misgiving was so strong that I must needs steal back into the lobby and softly open the outer door to satisfy myself.

  No; there was no mistake. There was my own name “Mr. James Mitchell” painted legibly above the lintel. Having ascertained this, I re-entered, closed the door rather noisily and strode across the lobby. But now another surprise awaited me.

  The room was in darkness.

  I stopped short expecting my visitor to come out. But he did not; nor was there any sound of movement from within. Rather nervously I struck a wax match and once more entered; and, as I looked round I uttered a gasp of amazement.

  The room was empty.

  I stood for some seconds staring with dropped jaw into the dim vacancy until the match burned my finger; when I dropped it and lit another in a mighty hurry. For the idea suddenly occurred to me that this unwieldy stranger must be a lunatic, and was perhaps at this moment lurking under the table. Very hastily I lit the gas and stepped back to the door. But a moment’s investigation showed me that there was no one in hiding. The room was undeniably empty; and yet there was no exit save by the door at which I had entered. The affair was incomprehensible and beyond belief. Not only was the room empty; there was no sign of its having been entered. The bureau was shut, and when I stepped over to it and tried the flap, I found it locked as I had left it.

  Needless to say, I searched the entire “set.” I lit the gas in the lobby, the bedroom, the office and the little kitchen. I looked under the bed, into the wardrobe, and opened cupboards that would hardly have hidden a baby, much less the leviathan who had so amazingly vanished. And when I had proved beyond all doubt that there was no one in the chambers but myself, I went back to the sitting-room and gazed uncomfortably at the bureau. Of course there could be only one explanation. The fat man was an illusion; a figment of my own brain. There had really never been anyone in the place at all.

  This was all very well as an explanation, but it was not particularly satisfactory. Hallucinations are awkward things. The brain that generates non existent fat men is not a sound brain. And the circumstantiality of the illusion only made it worse. For I could recall the fat man perfectly
as he sat with the candlelight filtering through the edge of his wig; and now that I came to reflect on it, that wig was a very peculiar one. It was not a barrister’s wig at all, nor a judge’s, in fact it was not a horse-hair wig of any kind. It was softer and closer as if made of actual human hair.

  Reflection on the subject was so disquieting that I determined to dismiss it from my mind; and, to that end, set about composing a letter which I had to send off to a solicitor in the morning. Unlocking and opening the flap of the bureau, I lit the candle, and, seating myself, took a sheet of paper from the stationery drawer and picked up a pen from the rack. As I turned over the opening paragraph of my proposed letter, and before I had raised the lid of the ink-stand, I tried the point of the pen, as is my habit, on my thumb-nail. How can I express my astonishment when, on glancing at my nail after doing so, I perceived on it a little spot of wet ink!

  I was thunderstruck. Here, at any rate, was a tangible fact; and what made it more conclusive was the circumstance that I had, that very morning, placed a new pen in the rack and thrown the old one away. This pen, therefore, now charged with wet ink, had never been used by me. It was an amazing affair. I sat or a quite considerable time reflecting on it, and might have reflected much longer, but that, happening to glance at the pen in my hand, I perceived that it was perfectly clean and unused. There was not a sign of ink on it, either wet or dry. Instinctively I held up my thumb-nail and looked at it. But the spot of ink had vanished; or, at least, there was no spot there, and, of course, there had never been any spot. The wet ink, like the fat man, was an illusion; the product of some disordered state of my own brain.

  It was excessively disturbing, but it was useless to puzzle over it and fret about it. No doubt the condition would pass, and meanwhile it were wiser to ignore it, and quietly attend to my health. Thus reflecting, I addressed myself to my letter, dipped my pen, wrote “Dear Sir,” and plunged forthwith into the matter. I wrote on with the easy fluency of a man who is committing to paper that which is already in his mind, reached the bottom of the page, turned over, finished the letter in a couple more lines, and signed my name. Then I rose and fetched the letter-book from my copying-press.

  I had opened the book, and was about to take the brush from the water pot when my eye chanced to fail on the letter that I had just written; whereupon I fairly cried out with astonishment. For the name that I had signed was not my own name, nor was it even in my own handwriting; and, if anything could make the affair more astonishing, it was that I had written down a name that was entirely strange to me—Phineas Desborough. Who on earth was Phineas Desborough? and what was his confounded name doing at the foot of my letter?

  I don’t mind admitting that I was now considerably alarmed, and that the hand with which I picked up the precious document was far from a steady one. So completely was I overpowered that I was sensible of no further surprise on finding the matter of the epistle as strange as the signature, or on seeing the purple copying ink fade before my eyes into a spectral brown. My capacity for astonishment was exhausted. However, I reflected grimly, there could be no breach of confidence in reading my own letter, and accordingly I reseated myself and proceeded to run my eye, with far from pleasurable curiosity, over the faded writing to ascertain what I had been saying. I read the letter through with close attention and now quote its contents with a clear memory. They were as follows:

  “16, Field Court, Gray’s Inn,

  11th April, 1785.

  Madam,—Your esteemed letter of the 20th ultimo was duly received by me with profound gratification. Pray permit me respectfully to acknowledge the gracious condescension of your language towards one who has wrought much mischief and who now makes restitution only on the verge of the grave. It were better, I conceive, since your guardian must on no account be privy to our meeting, that you should not be seen at my chambers. You say that you will arrive in London on the evening of the 22nd instant, and will be free from the observation of your guardian on the following afternoon. That being so, I venture to give you the following directions: Walk from your lodging at the Saracen up Fleet Street on the south side and so through that arch of Temple Bar that abuts on Mr. Child’s Bank. In that arch I shall take my stand at three of the clock punctually, and since the arch encloses but a strait passage, and my person (by reason of my habit of body and the dropsy with which it hath pleased God most justly to afflict me) will occupy the greater part thereof, you must needs pass me so close that I may readily place the book in your hands without being observed.

  Conceal the book most carefully (’tis but a small one), and when you are quite private and secure from observation, carry a sharp pen-knife round the line that I have marked within the cover so as to cut fairly through the lining.

  “I shall say no more, save that I have devised my entire property by will to your brother Jonathan, and that I entreat you to advise me when you have accomplished my directions and have the writing safely in your custody.

  “I am, Madam,

  Your Most obedient humble Servant,

  “Phineas Desborough.

  “To Mrs. Susan Pierpoint.”

  I laid the letter down and took a few turns up and down the room. Here, at least, was no illusion. The circumstantial detail and the names of the persons, entirely unknown to me, seemed to put that quite out of the question. The thing that troubled me most was the ink, the change in which admitted of no reasonable explanation. And, now that I came to think of it, the paper itself had seemed to undergo some kind of metamorphosis; a change that I had, as it were, noted subconsciously and passed over at the moment. To make sure that this was actually the case, I stepped over to the bureau and again took up the letter. And then I stood like a graven image with the sheet of paper in my hand and my eyes riveted on the opening words:

  “Dear Sir,

  “Bayste V. Jarvie,

  “19, Fig Tree Court, Inner Temple, 18th May, 1901.

  “Referring to our conversation of the 16th instant—”

  I turned the page and looked on my signature “James Mitchell,” of which the ink was still fresh and purple. So Phineas Desborough’s letter, like the ink spot and the fat man, was after all an illusion.

  But what an illusion! Even as I glanced over my own missive, couched in the characterless phraseology of today, the more rounded periods of the antique letter came fresh and word-perfect to my memory. There was something out of the common here. Either some outside agency had by some means gained access to my consciousness, or I was (to borrow Mr. Solomon’s graceful euphemism) “going balmy on the crumpet.” And neither alternative was an agreeable one to contemplate.

  I placed my letter in an envelope, which I addressed but left open that I might examine it in the morning and make sure that it had undergone no fresh metamorphoses. Then I went to bed, to lie awake a full hour meditating on Phineas Desborough and Mistress Susan Pierpoint and wondering if there had ever been such persons or if they were merely the products of a disordered brain.

  Among my acquaintances in the Temple at this period was, as I have already mentioned, a law student named Frank Leyland. I had a great regard for Leyland. In the first place, he was a fine handsome young fellow, and I have a partiality for good-looking people. Then he was fairly bursting with health and good spirits, qualities which, also, I appreciate highly. For your happy man is a benefactor to his species. Just as one may gather knowledge from the wise, so, by contact with the happy, may one improve one’s spirits; a truth deserving of consideration by the middle-aged.

  It was on the following Sunday night that I encountered Leyland, emerging with the other worshippers from the Temple Church, and—I regret to say—yawning prodigiously.

  “Why do you go to church if it makes you yawn?” I asked.

  “Free lesson in elocution,” he replied. “There’s no model like a good-class parson. Actor’s no good; too florid. Lawyer’s too prosy. But a parson’s the happy mean; a good style not hampered by matter. Are you going home?” />
  “Yes, I was going home; to Fig Tree Court, that is to say.”

  “Why not come and smoke a cigar with me?” Leyland suggested.

  Why not? I was not specially yearning for a solitude which was apt to be disturbed by reminiscences of the late (or never) Phineas Desborough and suspicions of crumpetic unsoundness.

  “I’ve just bought a Wheatley’s Pepys,” said Leyland; and that settled it. A minute later we were in his rather expensively appointed chambers in Tanfield Court with a pile of his newly-purchased books on the table.

  We overhauled the treasures one by one, dipping into them and sampling passages, criticising illustrations and appraising bindings, until, at the bottom of the pile, we came on Goodeve’s “Real Property.”

  “I am glad to see you are not neglecting your studies,” I said, nodding at the forbidding volume, but not essaying to sample its contents.

  “Oh, it’s not professional enthusiasm,” said Leyland. “I have a personal interest in property law at the moment. That’s why I bought Goodeve; but now that I’ve got you here, I don’t see why I shouldn’t take counsel’s opinion instead of muddling it out myself.”

  “Neither do I. It will probably save time. Pass the tobacco-jar and propound your riddle.”

  He pushed over the jar and a box of cigars. “The question is,” said he, “what is the position of a man who threatens to cut his only son off with a shilling?”

  “Well,” I replied, “in my limited experience as a playgoer, his position is usually in the middle of the hearth-rug, with his legs a-straddle, and his hands under his coat-tails.”

  Leyland grinned cheerfully. “I mean his legal position,” said he. “Can he do it?

  “That is a very vague question to come from a half-fledged barrister. The question turns on the manner in which the property is held. If a man holds his property absolutely, he can dispose of it absolutely; if he holds it subject to conditions, he can only dispose of it in accordance with those conditions. But why do you want to know?”