“No, to be sure,” was the reply. “But that was only a momentary lapse, and I expect you had ulterior motives. However, the association of Cornwall, worm-hunting and medical jurisprudence reminds me that I have something in your line. A friend of mine, who was wintering in Cornwall, picked it up on the beach at Morte Hoe and sent it to me. Now, where is it? It is on this table somewhere. It is a ridiculous thing; a small, flat cork, evidently from a zoologist’s collecting-bottle, for it has a label stuck on it with the inscription ‘marine worms.’ It seems that our zoologist was a sort of Robinson Crusoe, for he had bored a couple of holes through it and evidently used it as a button. But the most ludicrous thing about it is that a Terebella has built its tube on it; as if the worm had been prowling about, looking for lodgings and had read the label and forthwith engaged the apartments. Ah! here it is.” He pounced on a little cardboard box, and opening it, took out the cork button and laid it in Thorndyke’s palm.
As the professor was describing the object Phillip looked at him with a distinctly startled expression, and uttered a smothered exclamation. He was about to speak, but suddenly checked himself and looked at Thorndyke, who flashed at him a quick glance of understanding.
“Isn’t that a quaint coincidence?” chuckled the professor. “I mean that the worm should have taken up his abode and actually built his tube on the label.”
“Very quaint,” replied Thorndyke, still looking with deep interest at the object that lay in his hand.
“You realize,” Phillip said in a low voice as the professor turned away to answer a question, “that this button came from Purcell’s oilskin coat?”
“Yes, I remember the incident. I realized what it was as soon as D’Arcy described the button.” He glanced curiously at Phillip, wondering whether he, too, realized exactly what this queer piece of jetsam was. For to Thorndyke its message had been conveyed even before the professor had finished speaking. In that moment it had been borne to him that the unlooked-for miracle had happened and that Margaret Purcell’s petition need never be filed.
“Well, Thorndyke,” said the Professor, “my friend’s treasure trove seems to interest you. I thought it would as an instance of the possibilities of coincidence. Quite a useful lesson to a lawyer, by the way.”
“Exactly,” said Thorndyke. “In fact, I was going to ask you to allow me to borrow it to examine at my leisure.”
The professor was delighted. “There now,” he chuckled with a mischievous twinkle at Phillip, “what did I tell you? He hasn’t come here for the comparative anatomy at all. He has just come to grub for legal data. And now, you see, the medico-legal worm has arrived and is instantly collared by the medical jurist. Take him, by all means, Thorndyke. You needn’t borrow him. I present him as a gift to your black museum. You needn’t return him.”
Thorndyke thanked the professor, and having packed the specimen with infinite tenderness in its cotton wool, bestowed the box in his waistcoat pocket. A few minutes later he and Phillip took their leave of the professor and departed, making their way through Lincoln’s Inn to Chancery Lane.