He looked at the memorial picture and in a moment it seemed to him to have become futile. The murder itself was futile—so far as he was concerned, though it had set Maggie free. To what purpose had he killed Purcell? It had been to ensure a future for himself; and behold there was to be no future for him after all. Thus in the bitterness of his disappointment he saw everything out of proportion and in false perspective. He forgot that it was not to win Margaret but to escape from the clutches of his parasite that he had pulled the trigger on that sunny day in June. He forgot that he had achieved the very object that was in his mind when he fired the shot; freedom to live a reputable life safe from the menace of the law. His passion for Margaret had become so absorbing that it had obscured all the other purposes of his life; and now that it was gone, it seemed to him that nothing was left.
As he stood thus gloomily reflecting with his eyes fixed on the little picture he began to be aware of a new impulse. The lighthouse, the black-sailed luggers, the open sea, seemed to take on an unwonted friendliness. They were the setting of something besides tragedy. There, in Cornwall, he had been happy in a way despite the abiding menace of Purcell’s domination. There, at Sennen, he had lived under the same roof with her, had sat at her table, had been her guest and her accepted friend. It had not really been a happy period, but memory, like the sun-dial, numbers only the sunny hours, and Varney looked back on it with wistful eyes. At least his dream had not been shattered then. So, as he looked at the picture he felt stirring within him a desire to go back and look upon those scenes again. Falmouth and Penzance and Sennen—especially Sennen—seemed to draw him. He wanted to look out across the sea to the Longships and in the gathering gloom of the horizon to see the diamond and the ruby sparkle as they did that evening when he and the distant lighthouse seemed to hold secret converse.
It was, perhaps, a strange impulse. Whence it came he neither knew nor asked. It may have been the effect of memory and association. It may have been mere unrest. Or it may have been that a dead hand beckoned to him to come. Who shall say? He only knew that he was sensible of the impulse and that it grew from moment to moment.
To a man in his condition, to feel an impulse is to act on it. No sooner was he conscious of the urge to go back and look upon the well-remembered scenes than he began to make his simple preparations for the journey. Like most experienced travellers he travelled light. Most of his kit, including his little case of sketching materials, was in the studio. The rest could be picked up at his lodgings en route for Paddington. Within ten minutes of his having formed the resolve to go, he stood on the threshold locking the studio door from without with the extra key that he used when he was absent for more than a day. At the outer gate he paused to pocket the key and stood for a few moments with his portmanteau in his hand, looking back at the studio with a curiously reflective air. Then, at last, he turned and went on his way. But if he could have looked, as the clairvoyant claims to look, through the bricks and mortar of London, he might at this very time have seen Dr. John Thorndyke striding up Chancery Lane from Fleet Street; might have followed him to the great gateway of Lincoln’s Inn (on the masonry whereof tradition has it that Ben Jonson worked as a bricklayer) and seen him pass through into the little square beyond and finally plunge into the dark and narrow entry of one of the ancient red-brick houses that have looked down upon the square for some three or four centuries, an entry on the jamb of which was painted the name of Mr. John Rodney.
But Varney was not a clairvoyant, and neither was Thorndyke. And so it befell that each of them went his way unconscious of the movements of the other.
Chapter XV.
In Which Thorndyke Opens the Attack
As Thorndyke turned the corner at the head of the stairs, he encountered Phillip Rodney with a kettle in his hand, which he had apparently been filling at some hidden source of water.
“This is a bit of luck,” said Phillip, holding out his disengaged hand, “—for me, at least; not, perhaps, for you. I have only just arrived, and Jack hasn’t come over from the Courts yet. I hope this isn’t a business call.”
“In a sense it is,” replied Thorndyke, “as I am seeking information. But I think you can probably tell me all I want to know.”
“That’s all right,” said Phillip. “I’ll just plant Polly on the gas stove and while she is boiling we can smoke a preparatory pipe and you can get on with the examination in chief. Go in and take the presidential chair.”