He produced a key from his pocket with which he unlocked a wicket in the gate, and, having pushed it open, invited Thorndyke to enter. The latter passed through and the two brothers followed, locking the wicket after them, and conducted Thorndyke across a large yard to a desolate-looking wharf beyond which was a stretch of unreclaimed shore. Here, drawn up well above high-water mark, a small, sharp-sterned yacht stood on chocks under a tarpaulin cover.
“This is the yacht,” said Phillip, “but there is nothing on board of her. All the stores and gear and loose fittings are in the workshop behind us. Which will you see first?”
“Let us look at the gear,” replied Thorndyke; and they accordingly turned towards a large disused workshop at the rear of the wharf.
“Phil was telling me about your visit last night,” said Rodney, with an inquisitive eye on the research-case, “and we are both fairly flummoxed. He gathered that these inquiries of yours are in some way connected with Purcell.”
“Yes, that is so. I want to ascertain whether, when you resumed possession of the yacht after Purcell left her, you found her in the same condition as before and whether her stores, gear and fittings were intact.”
“Did you suppose that Purcell might have taken some of them away with him?”
“I thought it not impossible,” Thorndyke replied.
“Now I wonder why on earth you should think that,” said Rodney, “and what concern it should be of yours if he had.”
Thorndyke smiled evasively. “Everything is my concern,” he replied. “I am an Autolycus of the Law, a collector of miscellaneous trifles of evidence and unclassifiable scraps of information.”
“Well,” said Rodney with a somewhat sour smile, “I have no experience of legal curiosity shops and oddment repositories. But I don’t know what you mean by ‘evidence.’ Evidence of what?”