“So do I,” she said, frankly. “But you know that, too. And now tell what there is in the front page of The Times that gave you this sorely needed excuse.”
Rodney laughed in a boisterous, schoolboy fashion as he drew from his pocket a folded leaf of the newspaper. “It’s the great advertisement,” said he. “The Thorndyke-Varney or Varney-Thorndyke advertisement. It came out yesterday morning. Compose yourself to listen and I’ll read it out to you.”
He opened the paper out, refolded it into a convenient size, and with a portentous preliminary “Ahem!” read aloud in a solemn sing-song:
“Purcell, D. is earnestly requested to communicate to M. or her solicitor his intentions with regard to the future. If his present arrangements are permanent she would be grateful if he would notify her to that effect in order that she may make the necessary modifications in her own.”
As he finished, he looked up at her and laughed contemptuously.
“Well, Maggie,” said he, “what do you think of it?”
She laughed merrily and looked at him with hardly-disguised fondness and admiration. “What a schoolboy you are, John!” she exclaimed. “How annoyed Dr. Thorndyke would be if he could hear you! But it is rather funny. I can imagine Dan’s face when he reads it—if he ever does read it.”
“So can I,” chuckled Rodney. “I can see him pulling down his lower lip and saying ‘Gur’ in that pleasant way that he has. But isn’t it a perfectly preposterous exhibition? Just imagine a man of Thorndyke’s position doing a thing like this! Why, it is beneath the dignity of a country attorney’s office-boy. I can’t conceive how he got his reputation. He seems to be an absolute greenhorn.”
“Probably he is quite good at his own specialty,” suggested Margaret.
“But this is his own specialty. The truth is that the ordinary lawyer’s prejudice against experts is to a great extent justified. They are really humbugs and pretenders. You saw what his attitude was when I suggested that he should get Dan under observation. Of course it was the obvious thing to do, and one would suppose that it would be quite in his line. Yet as soon as I made the suggestion, he raised all sorts of difficulties; whereas a common private inquiry agent would have made no difficulty about it at all.”