“That was what I was going to suggest,” said Thorndyke. “The cab will hold the four of us, and the sooner we start the better.”
Our preparations were very soon made. Then the door was opened, I was assisted out through a lane of hungry-eyed spectators, held at bay by two constables, and deposited in the cab; and when the studio had been locked up, we drove off, leaving the neighbourhood to settle down to its normal condition.
CHAPTER XIX.
Thorndyke Disentangles the Threads
The days of my captivity at No. 5a, King’s Bench-walk passed with a tranquillity that made me realize the weight of the incubus that had been lifted. Now, in the mornings, when Polton ministered to me—until Arabella arrived and was ungrudgingly installed in office—I could let my untroubled thoughts stray to Marion, working alone in the studio with restored security, free for ever from the hideous menace which had hung over her. And later, when she, herself, released by her faithful apprentice, came to take her spell of nursing, what a joy it was to see her looking so fresh and rosy, so youthful and buoyant!
Of Thorndyke—the giver of these gifts—I saw little in the first few days, for he had heavy arrears of work to make up. However, he paid me brief visits from time to time, especially in the mornings and at night, when I was alone, and very delightful those visits were. For he had now dropped the investigator, and there had come into his manner something new—something fatherly or elder-brotherly; and he managed to convey to me that my presence in his chambers was a source of pleasure to him: a refinement of hospitality that filled up the cup of my gratitude to him.
It was on the fifth day, when I was allowed to sit up in bed—for my injury was no more than a perforating wound of the outer side of the calf, which had missed every important structure—that I sat watching Marion making somewhat premature preparations for tea, and observed with interest that a third cup had been placed on the tray.
“Yes,” Marion replied to my inquiry, “ ‘the Doctor’ is coming to tea with us to-day. Mr. Polton gave me the message when he arrived.” She gave a few further touches to the tea-set, and continued: “How sweet Dr. Thorndyke has been to us, Stephen! He treats me as if I were his daughter, and, however busy he is, he always walks with me to the Temple gate and puts me into a cab. I am infinitely grateful to him—almost as grateful as I am to you.”
“I don’t see what you have got to be grateful to me for,” I remarked.
“Don’t you?” said she. “Is it nothing to me, do you suppose, that in the moment of my terrible grief and desolation, I found a noble, chivalrous friend whom I trusted instantly? That I have been guarded through all the dangers that threatened me, and that at last I have been rescued from them and set free to go my ways in peace and security? Surely, Stephen, dear, all this is abundant matter for gratitude. And I owe it all to you.”
“To me!” I exclaimed in astonishment, recalling secretly what a consummate donkey I had been. “But there, I suppose it is the way of a woman to imagine that her particular gander is a swan.”