“Have you!” he exclaimed with a smile. “You are a pretty locum tenens. However, if you are quite at home there you can make a few discreet inquiries. Find out, if you can, whether any electros had been made recently, and if so, what they were and who was the client. Will you do that?”
I agreed readily, only too glad to take an active part in the investigation; and having by this time reached the end of Doughty-street, I took leave of Thorndyke, and made my way back to Cornish’s house.
CHAPTER X.
Marion’s Peril
The mist, which had been gathering since the early afternoon, began to thicken ominously as I approached Abbey-road, Hornsey, from Crouch End Station, causing me to quicken my pace so that I might make my destination before the fog closed in; for this was my first visit to Marion D’Arblay’s studio, and the neighbourhood was strange to me. And in fact I was none too soon; for hardly had I set my hand on the quaint bronze knocker above the plate inscribed “Mr. J. D’Arblay,” when the adjoining houses grew pale and shadowy and then vanished altogether.
My elaborate knock—in keeping with the distinguished knocker—was followed by soft, quick footsteps, the sound whereof set my heart ticking in double-quick time; the door opened, and there stood Miss D’Arblay, garbed in a most alluring blue smock or pinafore, with sleeves rolled up to the elbow, with a smile of friendly welcome on her comely face, and looking so sweet and charming that I yearned then and there to take her in my arms and kiss her. This, however being inadmissible, I shook her hand warmly and was forthwith conducted through the outer lobby into the main studio, where I stood looking about me with amused surprise. She looked at me inquiringly as I emitted an audible chuckle.
“It is a queer-looking place,” said I; “something between a miracle-shrine hung with votive offerings from sufferers who have been cured of sore heads and arms and legs, and a meat emporium in a cannibal district.”
“It is nothing of the kind!” she exclaimed indignantly. “I don’t mind the votive offerings, but I reject the cannibal meat-market as a gross and libellous fiction. But I suppose it does look rather queer to a stranger.”
“To a what?” I demanded fiercely.
“Oh, I only meant a stranger to the place, of course, and you know I did. So you needn’t be cantankerous.”
She glanced smilingly round the studio, and for the first time, apparently, the oddity of its appearance dawned on her, for she laughed softly and then turned a mischievous eye on me as I gaped about me like a bumpkin at a fair. The studio was a very large and lofty room or hall, with a partially glazed roof and a single large window just below the skylight. The walls were fitted partly with rows of large shelves, and the remainder with ranks of pegs. From the latter hung row after row of casts of arms, hands, legs, and faces—especially faces—while the shelves supported a weird succession of heads, busts, and a few half-length but armless figures. The general effect was very strange and uncanny, and what made it more so was the fact that all the heads presented perfectly smooth, bare craniums.