It was certainly a mysterious affair, and the mystery was in no wise dispelled by the return of the search party an hour later. It seemed that the bicycle had been tracked for a couple of miles towards London, but then, at the cross-roads, the tracks had become hopelessly mixed with the impressions of other machines and the officers, after cruising about vaguely for a while, had given up the hunt and returned.
“You see, Mrs. Chater,” Major Podbury explained apologetically, “the fellow must have had a good hour’s start, and that would have brought him pretty close to London.”
“Do you mean to tell me,” exclaimed Mrs. Chater, regarding the major with hardly-concealed contempt, “that that villain has got off scot-free?”
“Looks rather like it,” replied Podbury, “but if I were you I should get the man’s description from the attendants who saw him and go up to Scotland Yard tomorrow. They may know the Johnny there, and they may even recognize the coat if you take it with you.”
“That doesn’t seem very likely,” said Mrs. Chater, and it certainly did not; but since no better plan could be suggested the lady decided to adopt it; and I supposed that I had heard the last of the matter.
In this, however, I was mistaken. On the following day, just before noon, as I was drowsily considering the points in a brief dealing with a question of survivorship, while Thorndyke drafted his weekly lecture, a smart rat-tat at the door of our chambers announced a visitor. I rose wearily—I had had only four hours’ sleep—and opened the door, whereupon there sailed into the room no less a person than Mrs. Chater, followed by Superintendent Miller, with a grin on his face and a brown-paper parcel under his arm.
The lady was not in the best of tempers, though wonderfully lively and alert considering the severe shock that she had suffered so recently, and her disapproval of Miller was frankly obvious.
“Dr. Jervis has probably told you about the attempt to murder me last night,” she said, when I had introduced her to my colleague. “Well, now, will you believe it? I have been to the police, I have given them a description of the murderous villain, and I have even shown them the very coat that he wore, and they tell me that nothing can be done. That, in short, this scoundrel must be allowed to go his way free and unmolested.”
“You will observe, doctor,” said Miller, “that this lady has given us a description that would apply to fifty per cent. of the middle-class men of the United Kingdom, and has shown us a coat without a single identifying mark of any kind on it, and expects us to lay our hands on the owner without a solitary clue to guide us. Now we are not sorcerers at the Yard; we’re only policemen. So I have taken the liberty of referring Mrs. Chater to you.” He grinned maliciously and laid the parcel on the table.
“And what do you want me to do?” Thorndyke asked quietly.