As a thief in the night

by R. Austin Freeman

She led me into a quiet by-street, one side of which was occupied by a range of tall, rather forbidding buildings whose barrack-like aspect was to some extent mitigated by signs of civilized humanity in the tastefully curtained windows. Madeline’s residence was on the second floor, and when she had let me in by the diminutive outer door and switched on the light, she turned back to the staircase with a wave of her hand.

“I will be back as soon as I can,” she said. “Meanwhile go in and make yourself at home.”

I stood at the door and watched her trip lightly down the stairs until she disappeared round the angle, when I shut the door and proceeded to follow her injunctions to the letter by taking possession of the bathroom, in which I was gratified to find a constant supply of hot water. When I had refreshed myself by a wash, I went forth and made a leisurely survey of the little flat. It was all very characteristic of Madeline, the professional exponent of Domestic Economy, in its orderly arrangement and its evidences of considered convenience. The tiny kitchen reminded one of a chemical laboratory or a doctor’s dispensary with its labelled jars of the cook’s materials set out in ordered rows on their shelves, and the two little mortars, one of Wedgewood ware and the other of glass. I grinned as my eye lighted on this latter and I thought of the fragments carefully collected by Thorndyke and solemnly transported to the Temple for examination. Here, if he could have seen it, was evidence that proved the ownership of that other mortar and at the same time demolished the significance of that discovery.

I ventured to inspect the bedroom, and a very trim, pleasant little room it was; but the feature which principally attracted my attention was an arrangement for switching the electric light off and on from the bed—an arrangement suspiciously correlated to a small set of bookshelves also within easy reach of the bed. What interested me in it was what Thorndyke would have called its “unmechanical ingenuity”; for it consisted of no more than a couple of lengths of stout string, of each of which one end was tied to the light-switch and the other end led by a pair of screw-eyes to the head of the bed. No doubt the simple device worked well enough in spite of the friction at each screw-eye, but a man of less intelligence than Madeline would probably have used levers or bell-cranks, or at least pulleys to diminish the friction in changing the direction of the pull.

There was a second bedroom, at present unoccupied and only partially furnished and serving, apparently, as a receptacle for such of Madeline’s possessions as had not yet had a permanent place assigned to them. Here were one or two chairs, some piles of books, a number of pictures and several polished wood boxes and cases of various sizes; evidently the residue of the goods and chattels that Madeline had brought from her home and stored somewhere while she was living at Hilborough Square. I ran my eye along the range of boxes, which were set out on the top of a chest of drawers. One was an old-fashioned tea-caddy, another an obvious folding desk of the same period, while a third, which I opened, turned out to be a work-box of mid-Victorian age. Beside it was a little flat rosewood case which looked like a small case of mathematical instruments. Observing that the key was in the lock, I turned it and lifted the lid, not with any conscious curiosity as to what was inside it, but in the mere idleness of a man who has nothing in particular to do. But the instant that the lid was up my attention awoke with a bound and I stood with dropped jaw staring at the interior in utter consternation.

There could be not an instant’s doubt as to what this case was, for its green-baize-lined interior showed a shaped recess of the exact form of a pocket pistol; and, if that were not enough, there, in its own compartment was a little copper powder-flask, and in another compartment about a dozen globular bullets.

I snapped down the lid and turned the key and walked guiltily out of the room. My interest in Madeline’s flat was dead. I could think of nothing but this amazing discovery. And the more I thought, the more overpowering did it become. The pistol that fitted that case was the exact counterpart of the pistol that I had seen in Thorndyke’s laboratory; and the case, itself, corresponded exactly to his description of the case from which that pistol had probably been taken. It was astounding; and it was profoundly disturbing. For it admitted of no explanation that I could bring myself to accept other than that of a coincidence. And coincidences are unsatisfactory things; and you can’t do with too many of them at once.

Yet, on reflection, this was the view that I adopted. Indeed, there was no thinkable alternative. And really, when I came to turn the matter over, it was not quite so extraordinary as it had seemed at the first glance. For what, after all, was this pistol with its case? It was not a unique thing. It was not even a rare thing. Thorndyke had spoken of these pistols and cases as comparatively common things with which he expected me to be familiar. Thousands of them must have been made in their time, and since they were far from perishable, thousands of them must still exist. The singularity of the coincidence was not in the facts; it was the product of my own state of mind.

Thus I sought—none too successfully—to rid myself of the effects of the shock that I had received on raising the lid of the case; and I was still moodily gazing out of the sitting room window and arguing away my perturbation when I heard the outer door shut and a moment later Madeline looked into the room.

“I haven’t been so very long, have I?” she said, cheerily. “Now I will slip off my cloak and hat and we will consider what sort of meal we will have; or perhaps you will consider the question while I am gone.”