Chapter II

Thorndyke Devises a Scheme

As I entered the Temple by the Tudor Street gate the aspect of the place smote my senses with an air of agreeable familiarity.  Here had I spent many a delightful hour when working with Thorndyke at the remarkable Hornby case, which the newspapers had called “The Case of the Red Thumb Mark”; and here had I met the romance of my life, the story whereof is told elsewhere.  The place was thus endeared to me by pleasant recollections of a happy past, and its associations suggested hopes of happiness yet to come and in the not too far distant future.

My brisk tattoo on the little brass knocker brought to the door no less a person than Thorndyke himself; and the warmth of his greeting made me at once proud and ashamed.  For I had not only been an absentee; I had been a very poor correspondent.

“The prodigal has returned, Polton,” he exclaimed, looking into the room.  “Here is Dr. Jervis.”

I followed him into the room and found Polton—­his confidential servant, laboratory assistant, artificer and general “familiar”—­setting out the tea-tray on a small table.  The little man shook hands cordially with me, and his face crinkled up into the sort of smile that one might expect to see on a benevolent walnut.

“We’ve often talked about you, sir,” said he.  “The doctor was wondering only yesterday when you were coming back to us.”

As I was not “coming back to them” quite in the sense intended I felt a little guilty, but reserved my confidences for Thorndyke’s ear and replied in polite generalities.  Then Polton fetched the tea-pot from the laboratory, made up the fire and departed, and Thorndyke and I subsided, as of old, into our respective arm-chairs.

“And whence do you spring from in this unexpected fashion?” my colleague asked.  “You look as if you had been making professional visits.”

“I have.  The base of operations is in Lower Kennington Lane.”

“Ah!  Then you are ’back once more on the old trail’?”

“Yes,” I answered, with a laugh, “’the old trail, the long trail, the trail that is always new.’”

“And leads nowhere,” Thorndyke added grimly.

I laughed again; not very heartily, for there was an uncomfortable element of truth in my friend’s remark, to which my own experience bore only too complete testimony.  The medical practitioner whose lack of means forces him to subsist by taking temporary charge of other men’s practices is apt to find that the passing years bring him little but grey hairs and a wealth of disagreeable experience.

“You will have to drop it, Jervis; you will, indeed,” Thorndyke resumed after a pause.  “This casual employment is preposterous for a man of your class and professional attainments.  Besides, are you not engaged to be married and to a most charming girl?”

“Yes, I know.  I have been a fool.  But I will really amend my ways.  If necessary, I will pocket my pride and let Juliet advance the money to buy a practice.”