The First R. Austin Freeman MEGAPACK ®. R. Austin Freeman

the long evenings had been spent by me in solitary and undisturbed enjoyment of Dr. Cooper’s excellent library, but tonight a perverse fate decreed that I must wander abroad, because, forsooth, a preposterous farmer, who resided in a hamlet five miles distant, had chosen the evening of my guest’s arrival to dislocate his bucolic elbow. I half hoped that Thorndyke would offer to accompany me, but he made no such suggestion, and in fact seemed by no means afflicted at the prospect of my absence.

      “I have plenty to occupy me while you are away,” he said cheerfully; and with this assurance to comfort me I mounted my bicycle and rode off somewhat sulkily along the dark road.

      My visit occupied in all a trifle under two hours, and when I reached home, ravenously hungry and heated by my ride, half-past nine had struck, and the village had begun to settle down for the night.

      “Sergeant Payne is a-waiting in the surgery, sir,” the housemaid announced as I entered the hall.

      “Confound Sergeant Payne!” I exclaimed. “Is Dr. Thorndyke with him?”

      “No, sir,” replied the grinning damsel. “Dr. Thorndyke is hout.”

      “Hout!” I repeated (my surprise leading to unintentional mimicry).

      “Yes, sir. He went hout soon after you, sir, on his bicycle. He had a basket strapped on to it—leastways a hamper—and he borrowed a basin and a kitchen-spoon from the cook.”

      I stared at the girl in astonishment. The ways of John Thorndyke were, indeed, beyond all understanding.

      “Well, let me have some dinner or supper at once,” I said, “and I will see what the sergeant wants.”

      The officer rose as I entered the surgery, and, laying his helmet on the table, approached me with an air of secrecy and importance.

      “Well, sir,” said he, “the fat’s in the fire. I’ve arrested Mr. Draper, and I’ve got him locked up in the court-house. But I wish it had been someone else.”

      “So does he, I expect,” I remarked.

      “You see, sir,” continued the sergeant, “we all like Mr. Draper. He’s been among us a matter of seven years, and he’s like one of ourselves. However, what I’ve come about is this; it seems the gentleman who was with you this evening is Dr. Thorndyke, the great expert. Now Mr. Draper seems to have heard about him, as most of us have, and he is very anxious for him to take up the defence. Do you think he would consent?”

      “I expect so,” I answered, remembering Thorndyke’s keen interest in the case; “but I will ask him when he comes in.”

      “Thank you, sir,” said the sergeant. “And perhaps you wouldn’t mind stepping round to the court-house presently yourself. He looks uncommon queer, does Mr. Draper, and no wonder, so I’d like you to take a look at him, and if you could bring Dr. Thorndyke with you, he’d like it, and so should I, for, I assure you, sir, that although a conviction would mean a step up the ladder for me, I’d be glad enough to find that I’d made a mistake.”

      I was just showing my visitor out when a bicycle swept in through the open gate, and Thorndyke dismounted at the door, revealing a square hamper—evidently abstracted from the surgery—strapped on to a carrier at the back. I conveyed the sergeant’s request to him at once, and asked if he was willing to take up the case.

      “As to taking up the defence,” he replied, “I will consider the matter; but in any case I will come up and see the prisoner.”

      With this the sergeant departed, and Thorndyke, having unstrapped the hamper with as much care as if it contained a collection of priceless porcelain, bore it tenderly up to his bedroom; whence he appeared, after a considerable interval, smilingly apologetic for the delay.

      “I thought you were dressing for dinner,” I grumbled as he took his seat at the table.

      “No,” he replied. “I have been considering this murder. Really it is a most singular case, and promises to be uncommonly complicated, too.”

      “Then I assume that you will undertake the defence?”

      “I shall if Draper gives a reasonably straightforward account of himself.”

      It appeared that this condition was likely to be fulfilled, for when we arrived at the court-house (where the prisoner was accommodated in a spare office, under rather free-and-easy conditions considering the nature of the charge) we found Mr. Draper in an eminently communicative frame of mind.

      “I want you, Dr. Thorndyke, to undertake my defence in this terrible affair, because I feel confident that you will be able to clear me. And I promise you that there shall be no reservation or concealment on my part of anything that you ought to know.”

      “Very well,” said Thorndyke. “By the way, I see you have changed your shoes.”

      “Yes, the sergeant took possession of those I was wearing. He said something about comparing them with some footprints, but there can’t be any footprints like those shoes here in Sundersley. The nails are fixed in the soles in quite a peculiar pattern. I had them made in Edinburgh.”

      “Have you more than one pair?”

      “No. I have no other nailed boots.”

      “That is important,” said Thorndyke. “And now I judge that you have something to tell us that bears on this crime. Am I right?”

      “Yes. There is something that I am afraid it is necessary for you to know, although it is very painful to me to revive memories of my past that I had hoped were buried for ever. But perhaps, after all, it may not be necessary for these confidences to be revealed to anyone but yourself.”

      “I hope not,” said Thorndyke; “and if it is not necessary you may rely upon me not to allow any of your secrets to leak out. But you are wise to tell me everything that may in any way bear upon the case.”

      At this juncture, seeing that confidential matters were about to be discussed, I rose and prepared to withdraw; but Draper waved me back into my chair.

      “You need not go away, Dr. Jervis,” he said. “It is through you that I have the benefit of Dr. Thorndyke’s help, and I know that you doctors can be trusted to keep your own counsel and your clients’ secrets. And now for some confessions of mine. In the first place, it is my painful duty to tell you that I am a discharged convict—an ‘old lag,’ as the cant phrase has it.”

      He coloured a dusky red as he made this statement, and glanced furtively at Thorndyke to observe its effect. But he might as well have looked at a wooden figure-head or a stone mask as at my friend’s immovable visage; and when his communication had been acknowledged by a slight nod, he proceeded:

      “The history of my wrong-doing is the history of hundreds of others. I was a clerk in a bank, and getting on as well as I could expect in that not very progressive avocation, when I had the misfortune to make four very undesirable acquaintances. They were all young men, though rather older than myself, and were close friends, forming a sort of little community or club. They were not what is usually described as ‘fast.’ They were quite sober and decently-behaved young follows, but they were very decidedly addicted to gambling in a small way, and they soon infected me. Before long I was the keenest gambler of them all. Cards, billiards, pool, and various forms of betting began to be the chief pleasures of my life, and not only was the bulk of my scanty salary often consumed in the inevitable losses, but presently I found myself considerably in debt, without any visible means of discharging my liabilities. It is true that my four friends were my chief—in fact, almost my only—creditors, but still, the debts existed, and had to be paid.

      “Now these four friends of mine—named respectively Leach, Pitford, Hearn, and Jezzard—were uncommonly clever men, though the full extent of their cleverness was not appreciated by me until too late. And I, too, was clever in my way, and a most undesirable way it was, for I possessed the fatal gift of imitating handwriting and signatures with the most remarkable accuracy. So perfect were my copies that the writers themselves were frequently unable