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

servants, Sergeant Payne burst breathlessly into the room.

      “They’ve gone, sir!” he exclaimed, addressing Thorndyke. “They’ve given us the slip for good.”

      “Why, how can that be?” asked Thorndyke.

      “They’re dead, sir! All three of them!”

      “Dead!” we all exclaimed.

      “Yes. They made a burst for the yacht when they left the court, and they got on board and put out to sea at once, hoping, no doubt, to get clear as the light was just failing. But they were in such a hurry that they did not see a steam trawler that was entering, and was hidden by the pier. Then, just at the entrance, as the yacht was creeping out, the trawler hit her amidships, and fairly cut her in two. The three men were in the water in an instant, and were swept away in the eddy behind the north pier; and before any boat could put out to them they had all gone under. Jezzard’s body came up on the beach just as I was coming away.”

      We were all silent and a little awed, but if any of us felt regret at the catastrophe, it was at the thought that three such cold-blooded villains should have made so easy an exit; and to one of us, at least, the news came as a blessed relief.

      THE STRANGER’S LATCHKEY (1909)

      The contrariety of human nature is a subject that has given a surprising amount of occupation to makers of proverbs and to those moral philosophers who make it their province to discover and expound the glaringly obvious; and especially have they been concerned to enlarge upon that form of perverseness which engenders dislike of things offered under compulsion, and arouses desire of them as soon as their attainment becomes difficult or impossible. They assure us that a man who has had a given thing within his reach and put it by, will, as soon as it is beyond his reach, find it the one thing necessary and desirable; even as the domestic cat which has turned disdainfully from the preferred saucer, may presently be seen with her head jammed hard in the milk-jug, or, secretly and with horrible relish, slaking her thirst at the scullery sink.

      To this peculiarity of the human mind was due, no doubt, the fact that no sooner had I abandoned the clinical side of my profession in favour of the legal, and taken up my abode in the chambers of my friend Thorndyke, the famous medico-legal expert, to act as his assistant or junior, than my former mode of life—that of a locum tenens, or minder of other men’s practices—which had, when I was following it, seemed intolerably irksome, now appeared to possess many desirable features; and I found myself occasionally hankering to sit once more by the bedside, to puzzle out the perplexing train of symptoms, and to wield that power—the greatest, after all, possessed by man—the power to banish suffering and ward off the approach of death itself.

      Hence it was that on a certain morning of the long vacation I found myself installed at The Larches, Burling, in full charge of the practice of my old friend Dr. Hanshaw, who was taking a fishing holiday in Norway. I was not left desolate, however, for Mrs. Hanshaw remained at her post, and the roomy, old-fashioned house accommodated three visitors in addition. One of these was Dr. Hanshaw’s sister, a Mrs. Haldean, the widow of a wealthy Manchester cotton factor; the second was her niece by marriage, Miss Lucy Haldean, a very handsome and charming girl of twenty-three; while the third was no less a person than Master Fred, the only child of Mrs. Haldean, and a strapping boy of six.

      “It is quite like old times—and very pleasant old times, too—to see you sitting at our breakfast-table, Dr. Jervis.” With these gracious words and a friendly smile, Mrs. Hanshaw handed me my tea-cup.

      I bowed. “The highest pleasure of the altruist,” I replied, “is in contemplating the good fortune of others.”

      Mrs. Haldean laughed. “Thank you,” she said. “You are quite unchanged, I perceive. Still as suave and as—shall I say oleaginous?”

      “No, please don’t!” I exclaimed in a tone of alarm.

      “Then I won’t. But what does Dr. Thorndyke say to this backsliding on your part? How does he regard this relapse from medical jurisprudence to common general practice?”

      “Thorndyke,” said I, “is unmoved by any catastrophe; and he not only regards the ‘Decline and Fall-off of the Medical Jurist’ with philosophic calm, but he even favours the relapse, as you call it. He thinks it may be useful to me to study the application of medico-legal methods to general practice.”

      “That sounds rather unpleasant—for the patients, I mean,” remarked Miss Haldean.

      “Very,” agreed her aunt. “Most cold-blooded. What sort of man is Dr. Thorndyke? I feel quite curious about him. Is he at all human, for instance?”

      “He is entirely human,” I replied; “the accepted tests of humanity being, as I understand, the habitual adoption of the erect posture in locomotion, and the relative position of the end of the thumb—”

      “I don’t mean that,” interrupted Mrs. Haldean. “I mean human in things that matter.”

      “I think those things matter,” I rejoined. “Consider, Mrs. Haldean, what would happen if my learned colleague were to be seen in wig and gown, walking towards the Law Courts in any posture other than the erect. It would be a public scandal.”

      “Don’t talk to him, Mabel,” said Mrs. Hanshaw; “he is incorrigible. What are you doing with yourself this morning, Lucy?”

      Miss Haldean (who had hastily set down her cup to laugh at my imaginary picture of Dr. Thorndyke in the character of a quadruped) considered a moment.

      “I think I shall sketch that group of birches at the edge of Bradham Wood,” she said.

      “Then, in that case,” said I, “I can carry your traps for you, for I have to see a patient in Bradham.”

      “He is making the most of his time,” remarked Mrs. Haldean maliciously to my hostess. “He knows that when Mr. Winter arrives he will retire into the extreme background.”

      Douglas Winter, whose arrival was expected in the course of the week, was Miss Haldean’s fiancé. Their engagement had been somewhat protracted, and was likely to be more so, unless one of them received some unexpected accession of means; for Douglas was a subaltern in the Royal Engineers, living, with great difficulty, on his pay, while Lucy Haldean subsisted on an almost invisible allowance left her by an uncle.

      I was about to reply to Mrs. Haldean when a patient was announced, and, as I had finished my breakfast, I made my excuses and left the table.

      Half an hour later, when I started along the road to the village of Bradham, I had two companions. Master Freddy had joined the party, and he disputed with me the privilege of carrying the “traps,” with the result that a compromise was effected, by which he carried the camp-stool, leaving me in possession of the easel, the bag, and a large bound sketching-block.

      “Where are you going to work this morning?” I asked, when we had trudged on some distance.

      “Just off the road to the left there, at the edge of the wood. Not very far from the house of the mysterious stranger.” She glanced at me mischievously as she made this reply, and chuckled with delight when I rose at the bait.

      “What house do you mean?” I inquired.

      “Ha!” she exclaimed, “the investigator of mysteries is aroused. He saith, ‘Ha! Ha!’ amidst the trumpets; he smelleth the battle afar off.”

      “Explain instantly,” I commanded, “or I drop your sketch-block into the very next puddle.”

      “You terrify me,” said she. “But I will explain, only there isn’t any mystery except to the bucolic mind. The house is called Lavender Cottage, and it stands alone in the fields behind the wood. A fortnight ago it was let furnished to a stranger named Whitelock, who has taken it for the purpose of studying the botany of the district; and the only really mysterious thing about him is that no one has seen him. All arrangements with the house-agent were made by letter, and, as far as I can make out, none of the local tradespeople supply him, so he must get his things from a distance—even