The Red Thumb Mark | Page 8

who was, I perceived, in no way deceived by
the lawyer's pretence. "Don't hurry on my account; my time is my
own--at present." He held out his hand to Thorndyke, who grasped it
cordially.

"Good-bye, Mr. Hornby," said the latter. "Do not be unreasonably
sanguine, but at the same time, do not lose heart. Keep your wits about
you and let me know at once if anything occurs to you that may have a
bearing on the case."
The young man then took his leave, and, as the door closed after him,
Mr. Lawley turned towards Thorndyke.
"I thought I had better have a word with you alone," he said, "just to
hear what line you propose to take up, for I confess that your attitude
has puzzled me completely."
"What line would you propose?" asked Thorndyke.
"Well," said the lawyer, with a shrug of his shoulders, "the position
seems to be this: our young friend has stolen a parcel of diamonds and
has been found out; at least, that is how the matter presents itself to
me."
"That is not how it presents itself to me," said Thorndyke drily. "He
may have taken the diamonds or he may not. I have no means of
judging until I have sifted the evidence and acquired a few more facts.
This I hope to do in the course of the next day or two, and I suggest that
we postpone the consideration of our plan of campaign until I have
seen what line of defence it is possible to adopt." "As you will," replied
the lawyer, taking up his hat, "but I am afraid you are encouraging the
young rogue to entertain hopes that will only make his fall the
harder--to say nothing of our own position. We don't want to make
ourselves ridiculous in court, you know."
"I don't, certainly," agreed Thorndyke. "However, I will look into the
matter and communicate with you in the course of a day or two."
He stood holding the door open as the lawyer descended the stairs, and
when the footsteps at length died away, he closed it sharply and turned
to me with an air of annoyance.
"The 'young rogue,'" he remarked, "does not appear to me to have been

very happy in his choice of a solicitor. By the way, Jervis, I understand
you are out of employment just now?"
"That is so," I answered.
"Would you care to help me--as a matter of business, of course--to
work up this case? I have a lot of other work on hand and your
assistance would be of great value to me."
I said, with great truth, that I should be delighted.
"Then," said Thorndyke, "come round to breakfast to-morrow and we
will settle the terms, and you can commence your duties at once. And
now let us light our pipes and finish our yarns as though agitated clients
and thick-headed solicitors had no existence."
CHAPTER III
A LADY IN THE CASE
When I arrived at Thorndyke's chambers on the following morning, I
found my friend already hard at work. Breakfast was laid at one end of
the table, while at the other stood a microscope of the pattern used for
examining plate-cultures of micro-organisms, on the wide stage of
which was one of the cards bearing six thumb-prints in blood. A
condenser threw a bright spot of light on the card, which Thorndyke
had been examining when I knocked, as I gathered from the position of
the chair, which he now pushed back against the wall.
"I see you have commenced work on our problem," I remarked as, in
response to a double ring of the electric bell, Polton entered with the
materials for our repast.
"Yes," answered Thorndyke. "I have opened the campaign, supported,
as usual, by my trusty chief-of-staff; eh! Polton?"
The little man, whose intellectual, refined countenance and dignified
bearing seemed oddly out of character with the tea-tray that he carried,

smiled proudly, and, with a glance of affectionate admiration at my
friend, replied--
"Yes, sir. We haven't been letting the grass grow under our feet. There's
a beautiful negative washing upstairs and a bromide enlargement too,
which will be mounted and dried by the time you have finished your
breakfast."
"A wonderful man that, Jervis," my friend observed as his assistant
retired. "Looks like a rural dean or a chancery judge, and was obviously
intended by Nature to be a professor of physics. As an actual fact he
was first a watchmaker, then a maker of optical instruments, and now
he is mechanical factotum to a medical jurist. He is my right-hand, is
Polton; takes an idea before you have time to utter it--but you will
make his more intimate acquaintance by-and-by."
"Where did you pick him up?" I asked.
"He was an