Dr. Thorndyke Mysteries – Complete Series: 21 Novels & 40 Short Stories (Illustrated Edition). R. Austin Freeman
each work attentively with earnest discussion and a wealth of comment. As the morning wore on, visitors arrived in increasing numbers, until the two large rooms began to be somewhat inconveniently crowded. We had made a complete circuit of the pictures and were about to turn to the sculpture, which occupied the central floor space, when Sylvia touched me on the arm. "Let us sit down for a minute," said she. "I want to speak to you."
I led her to one of the large settees that disputed the floor-space with the busts and statuettes, and, somewhat mystified by her serious tone and by the rather agitated manner, which I now noticed for the first time, seated myself by her side. "What is it?" I asked.
She looked anxiously round the room, and, leaning towards me, said in a low tone: "Have you noticed a man who has been keeping near us and listening to our conversation?"
"No, I haven't," I replied. "If I had I would have given him a hint to keep farther off. But there's nothing in it, you know. In picture galleries it is very usual for people to hang about and try to overhear criticisms. This man may be interested in the exhibits."
"Yes, I know. But I don't think this person was so much interested in the exhibits. He didn't look at the pictures, he looked at us. I caught his eye several times reflected in the picture-glasses, and once or twice I saw him looking most attentively at this crucifix of mine. That was what really disturbed me. I wish, now, that I hadn't unbuttoned my coat."
"So do I. You will have to leave that crucifix at home if it attracts so much undesirable attention. Which is the man? Is he in this room?"
"No, I don't see him now. I expect he has gone into the next room."
"Then let us go there, too; and if you will point him out to me, I will pay him back in his own coin."
We rose and made our way to the door of communication, and, as we passed into the second room, Sylvia grasped my arm nervously. "There he is—don't let him see us looking at him—he is sitting on the settee at the farther end of the room."
It was impossible to make a mistake since the settee held only a single person; a fairly well-dressed, ordinary-looking man, rather swarthy and foreign in appearance, with a small waxed moustache. He was sitting nearly opposite the entrance door and seemed, at the moment to be reading over the catalogue, which he held open on his knee; but, as he looked up almost at the moment when we entered, I turned my back to him and continued my inspection with the aid of the reflection in a picture-glass. "He is probably a journalist," I said. "You see he is scribbling some notes on the blank leaves of his catalogue; probably some of your profound criticisms, which will appear, perhaps to-morrow morning, clothed in super-technical jargon, in a daily paper."
Here I paused suddenly, for I had made a rather curious observation. The reflection in a mirror is, as everybody knows, reversed laterally; so that the right hand of a person appears to be the left, and vice versa. But in the present case, no reversal seemed to have taken place. The figure in the reflection was writing with his right hand. Obviously, then, the real person was writing with his left.
This put a rather different aspect on the affair. Up to the present, I had been disposed to think that Sylvia had been unduly disturbed; for there are plenty of ill-bred bounders to be met in any public place who will stare a good-looking girl out of countenance. But now my suspicions were all awake. It is true that left-handed men are as common as blackberries; but still—"Can you tell me, Miss Vyne," I asked, as we worked our way towards the other end of the room, " if this man is at all like the one who frightened you so in Millfield Lane?"
"No, he is not. I am sure of that. The man in the lane was a good deal taller and thinner."
"Well, said I, "whoever he is, I want to have a good look at him, and the best plan will be to turn our attention to the sculpture. Shall we go and look at that rather remarkable pink bust?. That will give our friend a chance of another stare at you, and, if he doesn't take it, I will go and inspect him where he sits."
The bust to which I had referred was executed in a curious, rose-tinted marble, very crystalline and translucent, a material that suited the soft, girlish features of its subject admirably. It stood on an isolated pedestal quite near the settee on which the suspicious stranger was sitting, and I hoped that our presence might lure him from his retreat. "I don't think," I said, taking up a position with my back to the settee," that I have ever seen any marble quite like this. Have you?"
"No," replied Sylvia. "It looks like coarse lump sugar stained pink. And how very transparent it is; too transparent for most subjects."
Here she gave a quick, nervous glance at me, and I was aware of a shadow thrown by some person standing behind me. Had our friend risen to the bait already?
I continued the conversation in good audible tones. "Very awkward these isolated pedestals would be for slovenly artists who scamp the back of their work."
With this remark I moved round the pedestal as if to examine the back of the bust, and Sylvia followed. The move brought us opposite the person who had been standing behind me; and, sure enough, it was the gentleman from the settee. I continued to talk—rather blatantly, I fear—commenting on the careful treatment of the hair and the backs of the ears; and meanwhile took an occasional swift glance at the man opposite. He appeared to be gazing in wrapt admiration at the bust, but his glance, too, occasionally wandered; and when it did, the "point of fixation," as the oculists would express it, was Sylvia's crucifix, which was still uncovered.
Presently I ventured to take a good, steady look at him and was for a few moments unobserved. His left eye moved, as I could see, quite smoothly and evenly from point to point; but the right, at each change of position, gave a little, rapid, vertical oscillation. Suddenly he became aware of my, now undisguised, inspection of him, and, immediately, the oscillation became much more marked, as is often the case with these spasmodic movements. Perhaps he was conscious of the fact; at any rate, he turned his head away and then moved off to examine a statuette that stood near the middle of the room.
I looked after him, wondering what I ought to do. That he was the man whom I had seen on the two previous occasions I had not the slightest doubt, although I was still unable to identify his features or anything about him excepting the nystagmus and the left-handed condition. But there could be no question that he was the same man; and this very variability in his appearance only gave a more sinister significance to the affair, pointing clearly, as it did, to careful and efficient disguise. Evidently he had been, and still was, shadowing me, and, what was still worse, he seemed to be taking a most undesirable interest in Sylvia. And yet what could I do? My small knowledge of the law suggested that shadowing was not a criminal act unless some unlawful intent could be proved. As to punching the fellow's head—which was what I felt most inclined to do—that would merely give rise to disagreeable, and perhaps dangerous, publicity.
"My lord is pleased to meditate," Sylvia remarked at length, breaking in upon my brown study.
"I beg your pardon," I exclaimed. "The fact is I was wondering what we had better do next. Do you want to see anything else?"
"I should rather like to see the outside of the building," she answered. "That man has made me quite nervous."
"Then we will go at once, and we won't sign the visitor's book."
I led her to the door, and, as we rapidly descended the carpeted stairs, I considered once more what it were best to do. Had I been alone I would have kept our watcher in view and done a little shadowing on my own account; but Sylvia's presence made me uneasy. It was of the first importance that this sinister stranger should not learn where she lived. The only reasonable course seemed to be to give him the slip if possible. "What did you make of that man?" Sylvia asked when we were outside in the square. "Don't you think he was watching us?"
"Yes, I do. And I may say that I have seen him before."
She turned a terrified face to me and asked: "You don't think he is the wretch who pushed you into the river?"
Now this was exactly what I did think, but it was not worth while to say so. Accordingly I temporized. "It is impossible to say. I never saw that man, you know. But I have reason for thinking that this fellow is keeping a watch on me, and it occurs