The Red Thumb Mark | Page 2

a few minutes."
"Do you reside within that noble old portico?" I asked.
"No," replied Thorndyke. "I often wish I did. It would add several
inches to one's stature to feel that the mouth of one's burrow was graced
with a Latin inscription for admiring strangers to ponder over. No; my
chambers are some doors further down--number 6A"--and he turned to
point out the house as we crossed towards Crown Office Row.
At the top of Middle Temple Lane we parted, Thorndyke taking his
way with fluttering gown towards the Law Courts, while I directed my
steps westward towards Adam Street, the chosen haunt of the medical
agent.
The soft-voiced bell of the Temple clock was telling out the hour of
seven in muffled accents (as though it apologised for breaking the
studious silence) as I emerged from the archway of Mitre Court and
turned into King's Bench Walk.
The paved footway was empty save for a single figure, pacing slowly
before the doorway of number 6A, in which, though the wig had now
given place to a felt hat and the gown to a jacket, I had no difficulty in
recognising my friend.
"Punctual to the moment, as of old," said he, meeting me half-way.
"What a blessed virtue is punctuality, even in small things. I have just

been taking the air in Fountain Court, and will now introduce you to
my chambers. Here is my humble retreat."
We passed in through the common entrance and ascended the stone
stairs to the first floor, where we were confronted by a massive door,
above which my friend's name was written in white letters. "Rather a
forbidding exterior," remarked Thorndyke, as he inserted the latchkey,
"but it is homely enough inside."
The heavy door swung outwards and disclosed a baize-covered inner
door, which Thorndyke pushed open and held for me to pass in.
"You will find my chambers an odd mixture," said Thorndyke, "for
they combine the attractions of an office, a museum, a laboratory and a
workshop."
"And a restaurant," added a small, elderly man, who was decanting a
bottle of claret by means of a glass syphon: "you forgot that, sir."
"Yes, I forgot that, Polton," said Thorndyke, "but I see you have not."
He glanced towards a small table that had been placed near the fire and
set out with the requisites for our meal.
"Tell me," said Thorndyke, as we made the initial onslaught on the
products of Polton's culinary experiments, "what has been happening to
you since you left the hospital six years ago?"
"My story is soon told," I answered, somewhat bitterly. "It is not an
uncommon one. My funds ran out, as you know, rather unexpectedly.
When I had paid my examination and registration fees the coffer was
absolutely empty, and though, no doubt, a medical diploma contains--to
use Johnson's phrase--the potentiality of wealth beyond the dreams of
avarice, there is a vast difference in practice between the potential and
the actual. I have, in fact, been earning a subsistence, sometimes as an
assistant, sometimes as a locum tenens. Just now I've got no work to do,
and so have entered my name on Turcival's list of eligibles."
Thorndyke pursed up his lips and frowned.

"It's a wicked shame, Jervis," said he presently, "that a man of your
abilities and scientific acquirements should be frittering away his time
on odd jobs like some half-qualified wastrel."
"It is," I agreed. "My merits are grossly undervalued by a stiff-necked
and obtuse generation. But what would you have, my learned brother?
If poverty steps behind you and claps the occulting bushel over your
thirty thousand candle-power luminary, your brilliancy is apt to be
obscured."
"Yes, I suppose that is so," grunted Thorndyke, and he remained for a
time in deep thought.
"And now," said I, "let us have your promised explanation. I am
positively frizzling with curiosity to know what chain of circumstances
has converted John Evelyn Thorndyke from a medical practitioner into
a luminary of the law."
Thorndyke smiled indulgently.
"The fact is," said he, "that no such transformation has occurred. John
Evelyn Thorndyke is still a medical practitioner."
"What, in a wig and gown!" I exclaimed.
"Yes, a mere sheep in wolf's clothing," he replied. "I will tell you how
it has come about. After you left the hospital, six years ago, I stayed on,
taking up any small appointments that were going--assistant
demonstrator--or curatorships and such like--hung about the chemical
and physical laboratories, the museum and post mortem room, and
meanwhile took my M.D. and D.Sc. Then I got called to the bar in the
hope of getting a coronership, but soon after this, old Stedman retired
unexpectedly--you remember Stedman, the lecturer on medical
jurisprudence--and I put in for the vacant post. Rather to my surprise,