The latter alternative was adopted, and while the prices were being reckoned up and the bill was being made out, Thorndyke occupied himself in making, in shorthand, a copy of the list in the order book. He had finished and put away his notebook by the time the account was ready; when, having laid a visiting-card on the counter, he paid his score and began to put on his gloves.
“By the way,” said he, “your customer would not happen to be Mr. Scofield of the Middle Temple, I suppose?
“I really couldn’t say, sir,” replied Lambert. “He never gave any address. But I had an idea that he came up from the country. He used to give his orders and then he would call, at longish intervals, and take away as many of the stones as were ready. He was a middle-aged man, a bit on the shady side; tallish, clean-shaved, iron-grey hair, and not too much of it.”
“Ah, then I don’t think that would be the same Mr. Scofield. It is not a very uncommon name. Good-afternoon.”
With this Thorndyke took up his stick and, emerging from the shop, set a course southward for the Temple, walking quickly, as was his wont, with a long, swinging stride, and turning over in his mind the bearings of what he had just learned. In reality he had not learned much. Still, he had added one or two small items to his stock of facts, and in circumstantial evidence every added fact gives additional weight to all the others. He sorted out his new acquirements and considered each in turn.
In the first place, it was clear that Mr. Scofield’s collection was a facsimile of the missing part of Hollis’s. The list in Lambert’s book was identical with the one in his own pocket-book; which, in its turn, was a list of the forgeries. The discovery of the maker of the forgeries (a result of extensive preliminary scouting on the part of Polton) was of little importance at the moment, though it might be of great value in the future. For, since the forgeries existed, it was obvious that someone must have made them. Much more to the point was the identity of the person for whom they were made. Whoever ‘Mr. Scofield’ might have been, he certainly was not John Osmond. And this set Thorndyke once more puzzling over the really perplexing feature of this curious case. Why had Osmond absconded? That he had really done so, Thorndyke had no doubt, though he would have challenged the use of the word by anyone else. But why? There had been nothing to implicate him in any way. Beyond the hairs in the boxes—of which he could not have known and which were not at all conclusive—there was nothing to implicate him now but his own flight. All the other evidence seemed to point away from him. Yet he had absconded.
Thorndyke put to himself the various possibilities and argued them one at a time. There were three imaginable hypotheses. First, that Osmond had committed the robbery alone and unassisted; second, that he had been an accessory or worked with a confederate; third, that he had had no connection with the robbery at all.
The first hypothesis could be excluded at once, for Mr. Scofield must have been, at least, an accessory; and Mr. Scofield was not John Osmond. The second was much more plausible. It not only agreed with the known facts, but might even furnish some sort of explanation of the flight. Thus, supposing Osmond to have planned and executed the robbery with the aid of a confederate in the expectation that, even if discovered, it would never be traced to the office, might it not have been that, when, unexpectedly, it was so traced, Osmond had decided to take the onus on himself, and by absconding, divert suspicion from his accomplice? The thing was quite conceivable. It was entirely in agreement with Osmond’s character as pictured by Mr. Wampole; that of a rash, impulsive, rather unreasonable man. And if it were further assumed that there had been known to him some incriminating fact which he had expected to leak out, but which had not leaked out, then the whole set of facts, including the flight, would appear fairly consistent.
Nevertheless, consistent as the explanation might be, Thorndyke did not find it convincing. The aspect of Osmond’s rooms, with their suggestion of hardy simplicity and a robust asceticism, still lingered in his memory. Nor had he forgotten the impressive face of the gentlewoman whose portrait he had looked on with such deep interest in those rooms. These were, perhaps, but mere impressions, of no evidential weight; but yet they refused to be lightly dismissed.
As to the third hypothesis, that Osmond had not been concerned in the robbery at all, it would have been quite acceptable but for the irreconcilable fact of the flight. That seemed, beyond any question, to connect him with the crime. Of course it was conceivable that he might have some other reason for his flight. But no such reason had been suggested; whereas the circumstances in which he had elected to disappear—at the exact moment when the crime had been traced to the office—made it idle to look for any other explanation. And so, once more, Thorndyke found himself involved in a tangle of contradictions from which he could see no means of escape.
The end of his train of thought coincided with his arrival at the entry to his chambers. Ascending the stairs, he became aware of a light above as from an open door; and a turn of the staircase showed him that door—his own—framing a small, restless figure.
“Why, Polton,” he exclaimed, “you are early, aren’t you? I didn’t expect you for another hour or two.”
“Yes, sir,” replied Polton, “I got away early. But I’ve seen it, sir. And you were perfectly right—absolutely right. It is a sparrowhawk, stuck in a little log of cherry wood. Exactly as you said.”
“I didn’t say a sparrowhawk,” Thorndyke objected.
“You said, sir, that it was a stake or a bec iron or some kind of small anvil, and a sparrowhawk is a kind of small anvil.”
“Very well, Polton,” Thorndyke conceded. “But tell me how you managed it and why you are home so early.”
“Well, sir, you see,” Polton explained, fidgeting about the room as if he were afflicted with St. Vitus’s dance, “it came off much easier than I had expected. I got to his house a good hour too soon. His house keeper opened the door and wanted me to call again. But I said I had come down from London and would like to wait. And then I told her about the buttons and explained how valuable they were and asked her if she would like to see them; and she said she would. So she took me upstairs to his sitting-room and there I undid the parcel and showed her the buttons.
“Then I got talking to her about the rooms; remarked what a nice place Mr. Wampole had got and how beautifully it was kept.”
“Really, Polton!” Thorndyke chuckled, “I had no idea you were such a humbug.”
“No more had I, sir,” replied Polton, with a complacent crinkle. “But, you see, it was a case of necessity; and besides, the room was wonderfully neat and tidy. Well, I got her talking about the house, and very proud she seemed to be of it. So I asked her all the questions I could think of: whether she had a good kitchen and whether there was pipe water or a pump in the scullery, and so on. And she got so interested and pleased with herself that presently she offered to let me see over the house if I liked, and of course, I said that there was nothing in the world that I should like better. So she took me down and showed me the kitchen and the scullery and her own little sitting-room and a couple of big cupboards for linen and stores, and it was all as neat and clean as a new pin. Then we went upstairs again, and as we passed a door on the landing she said, ‘That’s a little room that Mr. Wampole does his tinkering in.’
“‘Ah!’ says I, ‘but I’ll warrant that room isn’t quite so neat and tidy. I do a bit of tinkering myself and I know what a workroom looks like.’
“‘Oh, it isn’t so bad,’ says she. ‘Mr. Wampole is a very orderly man. You shall see for yourself, if it isn’t locked. He usually locks it when he has a job in hand.’
“Well, it wasn’t locked; so she opened the door and in we went; and the very moment I put my head inside, I saw it—on the table that he used for a bench. It was set in a little upright log, such as you get from the trimmings of fruit trees. And, my word! it was fairly riddled.—like a sponge—and where it stood on the bench there was a regular ring of powder round it.
“‘That’s