"I expect so," I answered, remembering Thorndyke's keen interest in the case; "but I will ask him when he comes in."
"Thank you, sir," said the sergeant. "And perhaps you wouldn't mind stepping round to the court-house presently yourself. He looks uncommon queer, does Mr. Draper, and no wonder, so I'd like you to take a look at him, and if you could bring Dr. Thorndyke with you, he'd like it, and so should I, for, I assure you, sir, that although a conviction would mean a step up the ladder for me, I'd be glad enough to find that I'd made a mistake."
I was just showing my visitor out when a bicycle swept in through the open gate, and Thorndyke dismounted at the door, revealing a square hamper—evidently abstracted from the surgery—strapped on to a carrier at the back. I conveyed the sergeant's request to him at once, and asked if he was willing to take up the case.
"As to taking up the defence," he replied, "I will consider the matter; but in any case I will come up and see the prisoner."
With this the sergeant departed, and Thorndyke, having unstrapped the hamper with as much care as if it contained a collection of priceless porcelain, bore it tenderly up to his bedroom; whence he appeared, after a considerable interval, smilingly apologetic for the delay.
"I thought you were dressing for dinner," I grumbled as he took his seat at the table.
"No," he replied. "I have been considering this murder. Really it is a most singular case, and promises to be uncommonly complicated, too."
"Then I assume that you will undertake the defence?"
"I shall if Draper gives a reasonably straightforward account of himself."
It appeared that this condition was likely to be fulfilled, for when we arrived at the court-house (where the prisoner was accommodated in a spare office, under rather free-and-easy conditions considering the nature of the charge) we found Mr. Draper in an eminently communicative frame of mind.