“The God of love—ah, benedicite!
How mighty and how great a Lord is he!”
A week later Theodore Dalbrook was established in chambers on the second floor of No. 2, Ferret Court, Temple.
Ferret Court is one of the few places in the Temple which have not been improved and beautified out of knowledge within the last thirty years. The architect and the sanitary engineer have passed by on the other side, and have left Ferret Court to its original shabbiness. Its ceilings have not been elevated, or its windows widened, nor has the Early-English stone front replaced the shabby old brickwork. Its time has not come. The rooms are small and low, the queer old closets where generations of lawyers have kept their goods and chattels are dark and redolent of mice. The staircases are rotten, the heavy old balusters are black with age, and the deep old window-seats are set in windows of the early Georgian era.
The chambers suited Theodore, first because they were cheap, and next because the sitting-room, which was at the back, commanded a good view of the river. The bedroom was a tolerable size, and there was a dressing-room just big enough to hold bath and boots. He furnished the rooms comfortably, with solid old-fashioned furniture, partly consisting of surplus articles sent from the old house in Dorchester, and partly of his own purchases in London. The rooms were arranged with a sober taste which was by no means inartistic, and there was just enough bright colouring in the Algerian portières and a few handsome pieces of Oriental crockery to relieve the dark tones of old oak and Spanish mahogany. Altogether the chambers had the established look of a nest which was meant to last through wind and weather, a shelter in which a man expected to spend a good many years of his life.
He had another reason for choosing those old rooms in Ferret Court in preference to chambers in any of those new and commodious houses in the courts that had been rebuilt of late years. It was in this house that James Dalbrook had begun his legal career; it was here, on the ground floor, that the future Lord Cheriton had waited for briefs nearly forty years ago; and it was here that fame and fortune had first visited him, a shining apparition, bringing brightness into the shabby old rooms, irradiating the gloomy old court with the glory of triumphant ambition, hopes suddenly realized, the consciousness of victory. James Dalbrook had occupied those dingy chambers fifteen years, and long after he became a great man, and he had gone from them almost reluctantly to a spacious first-floor in King’s Bench Walk. He had enjoyed the reputation of a miser at that period of his life. He was never known to give a dinner to a friend; he lived in a close retirement which his enemies stigmatized as a hole-and-corner life; he was never seen at places of amusement; he never played cards, or bet upon a race. Socially he was unpopular.
Theodore had taken all the preliminary steps, and had arranged to read with a well-known special pleader. He was thoroughly in earnest in his determination to succeed in this new line. He wanted to prove to his father that his abandonment of the Dorchester office was neither a caprice nor a folly. He was even more in earnest in his desire to keep his promise to his cousin Juanita.
Almost his first act upon arriving in London had been to go to Scotland Yard in the hope of finding the detective who had been sent to Cheriton, and his inquiries there were so far successful that he was able to make an appointment with Mr. Churton for the next day but one.
He had talked with Churton after the adjourned inquest, and had heard all that the professional intellect had to offer in the way of opinion at that time; but he thought it worth his while to find out if the detective’s ideas had taken any new development upon subsequent reflection, and also to submit Juanita’s theory to professional consideration. He was not one of those amateurs who think that they are cleverer at a trade than the man who has served a long apprenticeship to it.
“Have you thought anything more about the Cheriton murder since last July, Mr. Churton?” he asked; “or has your current work been too engrossing to give you time for thought?”