The Third R. Austin Freeman Megapack. R. Austin Freeman

Here he paused for a few moments to fling away the bundle of driftwood into the hedge and refill and light his pipe. Then, with a springy step, be strode away into the gathering moonlit dusk.

      CHAPTER I

      MR. POTTERMACK MAKES A DISCOVERY

      A conscientious desire on the part of the present historian to tell his story in a complete and workmanlike fashion from the very beginning raises the inevitable question. What was the beginning? Not always an easy question to answer offhand; for if we reflect upon certain episodes in our lives and try to track them to their beginnings, we are apt, on further cogitation, to discover behind those beginnings antecedents yet more remote which have played an indispensable part in the evolution of events.

      As to this present history the whole train of cause and consequence might fairly be supposed to have been started by Mr. Pottermack’s singular discovery in his garden. Yet, when we consider the matter more closely, we may doubt if that discovery would ever have been made if it had not been for the sun-dial. Certainly it would not have been made at that critical point in Mr. Pottermack’s life; and if it had not—but we will not waste our energies on vain speculations. We will take the safe and simple course. We will begin with the sun-dial.

      It stood, when Mr. Pottermack’s eyes first beheld it, in a mason’s yard at the outskirts of the town. It was obviously of some age, and therefore could not have been the production of Mr. Gallett, the owner of the yard; and standing amidst the almost garishly new monuments and blocks of freshly hewn stone, it had in its aspect something rather downfallen and forlorn. Now Mr. Pottermack had often had secret hankerings for a sun-dial. His big walled garden seemed to cry out for some central feature: and what more charming ornament could there be than a dial which like the flowers and trees amidst which it would stand lived and had its being solely by virtue of the golden sunshine?

      Mr. Pottermack halted at the wide-open gate and looked at the dial (I use the word, for convenience to include the stone support). It was a graceful structure with a twisted shaft like that of a Norman column, a broad base and a square capital. It was nicely lichened and weathered, and yet in quite good condition. Mr. Pottermack found something very prepossessing in its comely antiquity. It had a motto, too, incised on the sides of the capital; and when he had strolled into the yard, and, circumnavigating the sun-dial, had read it, he was more than ever pleased. He liked the motto. It struck a sympathetic chord. Sole orto: spes: decedente pax. It might have been his own personal motto. At the rising of the sun; hope: at the going down thereof, peace. On his life the sun had risen in hope: and peace at eventide was his chief desire. And the motto was discreetly reticent about the intervening period. So, too, were there passages in the past which he was very willing to forget so that the hope of the morning might be crowned by peace when the shadows of life were lengthening.

      “Having a look at the old dial, Mr. Pottermack?” said the mason, crossing the yard and disposing himself for conversation. “Nice bit of carving, that, and wonderful well preserved. He’s counted out a good many hours in his time, he has. Seventeen thirty-four. And ready to count out as many again. No wheels to go rusty. All done with a shadder. No wear and tear about a shadder. And never runs down and never wants winding up. There’s points about a sun-dial.”

      “Where did it come from?”

      “I took it from the garden of Apsley Manor House, what’s being rebuilt and brought up to date. New owner told me to take it away. Hadn’t any use for sun-dials in these days, he said. More hasn’t anybody else. So I’ve got him on my hands. Wouldn’t like him for your garden, I suppose? He’s going cheap.”

      It appeared, on enquiry, that he was going ridiculously cheap. So cheap that Mr. Pottermack closed with the offer there and then,

      “You will bring it along and fix it for me?” said he.

      “I will, sir. Don’t want much fixing. If you will settle where he is to stand, I’ll bring him and set him up. But you’d better prepare the site. Dig well down into the subsoil and make a level surface. Then I can put a brick foundation and there will be no fear of his settling out of the upright.”

      That was how it began. And on the knife-edge of such trivial chances is human destiny balanced. From the mason’s yard Mr. Pottermack sped homeward with springy step, visualizing the ground-plan of his garden as he went; and by the time that he let himself into his house by the front door within the rose-embowered porch he was ready to make a bee-line for the site of his proposed excavation.

      He did not, however; for, as he opened the door, he became aware of voices in the adjacent room and his housekeeper came forth to inform him that Mrs. Bellard had called to see him, and was waiting within. Apparently the announcement was not unwelcome, for Mr. Pottermack’s cheerfulness was in nowise clouded thereby. We might even go far as to say that his countenance brightened.

      Mrs. Bellard was obviously a widow. That is not to say that she was arrayed in the hideous “weeds” with which, a generation ago, women used to make their persons revolting and insult the memory of the deceased. But she was obviously a widow. More obviously than is usual in these latter days. Nevertheless her sombre raiment was well-considered, tasteful and becoming; indeed the severity of her dress seemed rather to enhance her quiet, dignified comeliness. She greeted Mr. Pottermack with a frank smile, and as they shook hands she said in a singularly pleasant, musical voice:

      “It is too bad of me to come worrying you like this. But you said I was to.”

      “Of course I did,” was the hearty response; and as the lady produced from her basket a small tin box, he enquired: “Snails?”

      “Snails,” she replied; and they both laughed.

      “I know,” she continued, “it is very silly of me. I quite believe that, as you say, they die instantaneously when you drop them into boiling water. But I really can’t bring myself to do it.”

      “Very natural, too,” said Pottermack. “Why should you, when you have a fellow conchologist to do it for you? I will slaughter them this evening and extract them from their shells, and you shall have their empty residences tomorrow. Shall I leave them at your house?”

      “You needn’t trouble to do that. Give them to your housekeeper and I will call for them on my way home from the shops. But I really do impose on you most shamefully. You kill the poor little beasts, you clean out the shells, you find out their names and you leave me nothing to do but stick them on card, write their names under them, and put them in the cabinet. I feel a most horrid impostor when I show them at the Naturalists’ Club as my own specimens.”

      “But, my dear Mrs. Bellard,” protested Pottermack, “you are forgetting that you collect them, that you discover them in their secret haunts and drag them out to the light of day. That is the really scientific part of conchology. The preparation of the shells and their identification are mere journeyman’s work. The real naturalist’s job is the field work; and you are a positive genius in finding these minute shells—the pupas and cochlicopas and such like.”

      The lady rewarded him with a grateful and gratified smile, and, opening the little box, exhibited her “catch” and recounted some of the thrilling incidents of the chase, to which Pottermack listened with eager interest. And as they chatted, but half seriously, an observer would have noted that they were obviously the best of friends, and might have suspected that the natural history researches were, perhaps, somewhat in the nature of a plausible and convenient pretext for their enjoying a good deal of each other’s society. These little precautions are sometimes necessary in a country district where people take an exaggerated interest in one another and tongues are apt to wag rather freely.

      But a close observer would have noted certain other facts. For instance, these two persons were curiously alike in one respect: they both looked older to the casual stranger than they appeared on closer inspection. At a first glance, Mr. Pottermack, spectacled, bearded, and grave, seemed not far short of fifty. But a more critical examination showed that first impression to be erroneous. The quick, easy movements and the supple strength that they implied in the rather small figure, as well as the brightness of the alert, attentive eyes behind the spectacles, suggested that the lines upon the