The Red Thumb Mark eBook

R Austin Freeman
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 261 pages of information about The Red Thumb Mark.

The Red Thumb Mark eBook

R Austin Freeman
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 261 pages of information about The Red Thumb Mark.

“I suppose there is a keyhole in the laboratory door?” I suggested, with a grin.

“Sir!” he exclaimed indignantly.  “Dr. Jervis, I am surprised at you.”  Then, perceiving my facetious intent, he smiled also and added:  “But there is a keyhole if you’d like to try it, though I’ll wager the Doctor would see more of you than you would of him.”

“You are mighty secret about your doings, you and the Doctor,” I said.

“Yes,” he answered.  “You see, it’s a queer trade this of the Doctor’s, and there are some queer secrets in it.  Now, for instance, what do you make of this?”

He produced from his pocket a leather case, whence he took a piece of paper which he handed to me.  On it was a neatly executed drawing of what looked like one of a set of chessmen, with the dimensions written on the margin.

“It looks like a pawn—­one of the Staunton pattern,” I said.

“Just what I thought; but it isn’t.  I’ve got to make twenty-four of them, and what the Doctor is going to do with them fairly beats me.”

“Perhaps he has invented some new game,” I suggested facetiously.  “He is always inventing new games and playing them mostly in courts of law, and then the other players generally lose.  But this is a puzzler, and no mistake.  Twenty-four of these to be turned up in the best-seasoned boxwood!  What can they be for?  Something to do with the experiments he is carrying on upstairs at this very moment, I expect.”  He shook his head, and, having carefully returned the drawing to his pocket-book, said, in a solemn tone—­“Sir, there are times when the Doctor makes me fairly dance with curiosity.  And this is one of them.”

Although not afflicted with a curiosity so acute as that of Polton, I found myself speculating at intervals on the nature of my colleague’s experiments and the purpose of the singular little objects which he had ordered to be made; but I was unacquainted with any of the cases on which he was engaged, excepting that of Reuben Hornby, and with the latter I was quite unable to connect a set of twenty-four boxwood chessmen.  Moreover, on this day, I was to accompany Juliet on her second visit to Holloway, and that circumstance gave me abundant mental occupation of another kind.

At lunch, Thorndyke was animated and talkative but not communicative.  He “had some work in the laboratory that he must do himself,” he said, but gave no hint as to its nature; and as soon as our meal was finished, he returned to his labours, leaving me to pace up and down the walk, listening with ridiculous eagerness for the sound of the hansom that was to transport me to the regions of the blest, and—­incidentally—­to Holloway Prison.

When I returned to the Temple, the sitting-room was empty and hideously neat, as the result of Polton’s spring-cleaning efforts.  My colleague was evidently still at work in the laboratory, and, from the circumstance that the tea-things were set out on the table and a kettle of water placed in readiness on the gas-ring by the fireplace, I gathered that Polton also was full of business and anxious not to be disturbed.

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Project Gutenberg
The Red Thumb Mark from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.