“Yes, you’d better come,” said Thorndyke.  “It’s the adjourned hearing of poor Hornby’s case, you know.  There won’t be anything done on our side, but we may be able to glean some hint from the prosecution.”

“I should like to hear what takes place, at any rate,” I said, and we accordingly sallied forth together in the direction of Lincoln’s Inn, on the north side of which Mr. Lawley’s office was situated.

“Ah!” said the solicitor, as we entered, “I am glad you’ve come; I was getting anxious—­it doesn’t do to be late on these occasions, you know.  Let me see, do you know Mr. Walter Hornby?  I don’t think you do.”  He presented Thorndyke and me to our client’s cousin, and as we shook hands, we viewed one another with a good deal of mutual interest.

“I have heard about you from my aunt,” said he, addressing himself more particularly to me.  “She appears to regard you as a kind of legal Maskelyne and Cooke.  I hope, for my cousin’s sake, that you will be able to work the wonders that she anticipates.  Poor old fellow!  He looks pretty bad, doesn’t he?”

I glanced at Reuben, who was at the moment talking to Thorndyke, and as he caught my eye he held out his hand with a warmth that I found very pathetic.  He seemed to have aged since I had last seen him, and was pale and rather thinner, but he was composed in his manner and seemed to me to be taking his trouble very well on the whole.

“Cab’s at the door, sir,” a clerk announced.

“Cab,” repeated Mr. Lawley, looking dubiously at me; “we want an omnibus.”

“Dr. Jervis and I can walk,” Walter Hornby suggested.  “We shall probably get there as soon as you, and it doesn’t matter if we don’t.”

“Yes, that will do,” said Mr. Lawley; “you two walk down together.  Now let us go.”

We trooped out on to the pavement, beside which a four-wheeler was drawn up, and as the others were entering the cab, Thorndyke stood close beside me for a moment.

“Don’t let him pump you,” he said in a low voice, without looking at me; then he sprang into the cab and slammed the door.

“What an extraordinary affair this is,” Walter Hornby remarked, after we had been walking in silence for a minute or two; “a most ghastly business.  I must confess that I can make neither head nor tail of it.”

“How is that?” I asked.

“Why, do you see, there are apparently only two possible theories of the crime, and each of them seems to be unthinkable.  On the one hand there is Reuben, a man of the most scrupulous honour, as far as my experience of him goes, committing a mean and sordid theft for which no motive can be discovered—­for he is not poor, nor pecuniarily embarrassed nor in the smallest degree avaricious.  On the other hand, there is this thumb-print, which, in the opinion of the experts, is tantamount to the evidence of an eye-witness that he did commit the theft.  It is positively bewildering.  Don’t you think so?”