The Eye of Osiris, R. Austin Freeman [short novels to read TXT] 📗

those occasions I used to reflect with satisfaction on the gratifying circumstance—accidental though it was—that his wishes, as expressed (very imperfectly) in clause two, had been fully complied with, and that without prejudice to my interests.

"The awakening came on that evening when I saw you at the Temple gate talking with Doctor Berkeley. I suspected immediately that something was gone amiss and that it was too late to take any useful action. Since then, I have waited here in hourly expectation of this visit. And now the time has come. You have made the winning move and it remains only for me to pay my debts like an honest gambler."

He paused and quietly lit his cigarette. Inspector Badger yawned and put away his notebook.

"Have you done, Mr. Jellicoe?" the inspector asked. "I want to carry out my contract to the letter, you know, though it's getting devilish late."

Mr. Jellicoe took his cigarette from his mouth and drank a glass of water.

"I forgot to ask," he said, "whether you unrolled the mummy—if I may apply the term to the imperfectly treated remains of my deceased client."

"I did not open the mummy-case," replied Thorndyke.

"You did not!" exclaimed Mr. Jellicoe. "Then how did you verify your suspicions?"

"I took an X-ray photograph."

"Ah! Indeed!" Mr. Jellicoe pondered for some moments. "Astonishing!" he murmured; "and most ingenious. The resources of science at the present day are truly wonderful."

"Is there anything more that you want to say?" asked Badger; "because if you don't, time's up."

"Anything more?" Mr. Jellicoe repeated slowly; "anything more?
No—I—think—think—the time—is—up. Yes—the—the—time——"

He broke off and sat with a strange look fixed on Thorndyke.

His face had suddenly undergone a curious change. It looked shrunken and cadaverous and his lips had assumed a peculiar cherry-red color.

"Is anything the matter, Mr. Jellicoe?" Badger asked uneasily. "Are you not feeling well, sir?"

Mr. Jellicoe did not appear to have heard the question, for he returned no answer, but sat motionless, leaning back in his chair, with his hands spread out on the table and his strangely intent gaze bent on Thorndyke.

Suddenly his head dropped on his breast and his body seemed to collapse; and as with one accord we sprang to our feet, he slid forward off his chair and disappeared under the table.

"Good Lord! The man's fainted!" exclaimed Badger. In a moment he was down on his hands and knees, trembling with excitement, groping under the table. He dragged the unconscious lawyer out into the light and knelt over him, staring into his face.

"What's the matter with him, Doctor?" he asked, looking up at
Thorndyke. "Is it apoplexy? Or is it a heart attack, think you?"

Thorndyke shook his head, though he stooped and put his fingers on the unconscious man's wrist.

"Prussic acid or potassium cyanide is what the appearances suggest," he replied.

"But can't you do anything?" demanded the inspector.

Thorndyke dropped the arm, which fell limply to the floor.

"You can't do much for a dead man," he said.

"Dead! Then he has slipped through our fingers after all!"

"He has anticipated the sentence. That is all." Thorndyke spoke in an even, impassive tone which struck me as rather strange, considering the suddenness of the tragedy, as did also the complete absence of surprize in his manner. He seemed to treat the occurrence as a perfectly natural one.

Not so Inspector Badger; who rose to his feet and stood with his hands thrust into his pockets scowling sullenly down at the dead lawyer.

"I was an infernal fool to agree to his blasted conditions," he growled savagely.

"Nonsense," said Thorndyke. "If you had broken in you would have found a dead man. As it was you found a live man and obtained an important statement. You acted quite properly."

"How do you suppose he managed it?" asked Badger.

Thorndyke held out his hand.

"Let us look at his cigarette case," said he.

Badger extracted the little silver case from the dead man's pocket and opened it. There were five cigarettes in it, two of which were plain, while the other three were gold-tipped. Thorndyke took out one of each kind and gently pinched their ends. The gold-tipped one he returned; the plain one he tore through, about a quarter of an inch from the end; when two little black tabloids dropped out on to the table. Badger eagerly picked one up and was about to smell it when Thorndyke grasped his wrist. "Be careful," said he; and when he had cautiously sniffed at the tabloid—held at a safe distance from his nose—he added: "Yes, potassium cyanide. I thought so when his lips turned that queer color. It was in that last cigarette; you can see that he has bitten the end off."

For some time we stood silently looking down at the still form stretched on the floor. Presently Badger looked up.

"As you pass the porter's lodge on your way out," said he, "you might just drop in and tell him to send a constable to me."

"Very well," said Thorndyke. "And by the way, Badger, you had better tip that sherry back into the decanter and put it under lock and key, or else pour it out of the window."

"Gad, yes!" exclaimed the inspector. "I'm glad you mentioned it. We might have had an inquest on a constable as well as a lawyer. Good-night, gentlemen, if you are off."

We went out and left him with his prisoner—passive enough, indeed, according to his ambiguously worded promise. As we passed through the gateway Thorndyke gave the inspector's message, curtly and without comment, to the gaping porter, and then we issued forth into Chancery Lane.

We were all silent and very grave, and I thought that Thorndyke seemed somewhat moved. Perhaps Mr. Jellicoe's last intent look—which I suspect he knew to be the look of a dying man—lingered in his memory as it did in mine. Half-way down Chancery Lane he spoke for the first time; and then it was only to ejaculate, "Poor devil!"

Jervis took him up. "He was a consummate villain, Thorndyke."

"Hardly that," was the reply. "I should rather say that he was non-moral. He acted without malice and without scruple or remorse. His conduct exhibited a passionateless expediency which was dreadful because utterly unhuman. But he was a strong man—a courageous, self-contained man, and I had been better pleased if it could have been ordained that some other hand than mine should let the axe fall."

Thorndyke's compunction may appear strange and inconsistent, but yet his feeling was also my own. Great as was the misery and suffering that this inscrutable man had brought into the lives of those I loved, I forgave him; and in his downfall forgot the callous relentlessness with which he had pursued his evil purpose. For it was he who had brought Ruth into my life; who had opened for me the Paradise of Love into which I had just entered. And so my thoughts turned away from the still shape that lay on the floor of the stately old room in Lincoln's Inn, away to the sunny vista of the future, where I should walk hand in hand with Ruth until my time, too, should come; until I, too, like the grim lawyer, should hear the solemn evening bell bidding me put out into the darkness of the silent sea.

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