'Checkley,' he said, 'tell me the truth.'
'I always do,' he replied surlily.
'I have been suffering from fits of forgetfulness. Have you observed any impairing of the faculties? When a man's mental powers are decaying, he forgets things: he loses the power of work: his old skill leaves him: he cannot distinguish between good work and bad. He shows his mental decay, I believe, in physical ways—he shuffles as he walks; he stoops and shambles—and in his speech—he wanders and he repeats—and in his food and manner of eating. Have you observed any of these symptoms upon me, Checkley?'
'Not one. You are as upright as a lance: you eat like five-and-twenty: your talk is as good and your work is as good as when you were forty.—Don't think such things. To be sure you do forget a bit. But not your work. You only forget sometimes what you did out of the office—as if that matters. Do you remember the case you tackled yesterday afternoon?'
'Certainly.'
'Do you tell me that any man—forty years younger than you—could have tackled that case more neatly? Garn! Go 'long!'
Checkley went back to his office.
'What did she mean by it, then?' Mr. Dering murmured. 'Who put her on to such a suspicion? What did she mean by it? Of course it's nonsense.' So reassuring himself, he yet remained disquieted. For he could not remember.
At half-past five or so, Mr. Edmund Gray arrived at his Chambers. The outer door was closed, but he found his disciple waiting for him. She had been there an hour or more, she said. She was reading one of the books he had recommended to her. With the words of Mr. Dering in her ears, she read as if two voices were speaking to her—talking to each other across her.
She laid down the book and rose to greet him. 'Master,' she said, 'I have come from Mr. Dering. He is your solicitor, you told me.'