AKE yourself comfortable," said Muir Torrington, drawing up, beside the armchair in which he had placed Carey, a little table carrying decanter, siphon, and glasses. "Curtis will have turned in, of course, but I must just go and glance at the book. God knows whom I've missed or what I've missed by being out all night on this strange business. I sha'n't keep you many minutes."
He started with long strides for the door of the study, a gaunt, virile figure, then turned, and:
"Oh, by the way," he added, "these might amuse you until I come back."
He began hurriedly to inspect one of the many shelves. Finally, pulling out a pair of stout volumes and clapping them on the table beside Carey, he laughed, in sudden, boisterous good humour.
"You won't be able to make head or tail of them, my lad!" he declared; "but you remember my mentioning the reputation of Professor Hadrian von Gühl?"
"Yes," Carey replied.
"Well, these are two of his best works. Only three have been published in English. The third, and most celebrated, I lent to someone recently. But you will find two sufficient! I sha'n't be long."
He went out.
Carey, helping himself to whisky and soda, took a cigarette from a box upon the table, lighted it, and opened one of the volumes.
This he discovered to be a treatise upon obscure conditions of the pancreatic gland; and, having scanned half a dozen passages or so, and wondered whether his own duodenum chanced to be above reproach, he abandoned it in despair, turning to the second volume only to find himself lost again in a pathological maze. Here were singular diagrams and, to him, meaningless tables. He closed the book and lay back in his chair, looking around the room.
It was a room very characteristic of Muir Torrington. Some of the works on the shelves Carey remembered as having been in Torrington's possession in Edinburgh. The collection had been added to, how- ever, and now was so extensive as to have outgrown the accommodation of the study. Untidy stacks of books lay upon the floor, and all sorts of odds and ends were spread about in the utmost disorder, suggesting that they had been thrown into the room. There were a few instruments, and ambiguous liquids in bottles, the whole place appearing to be systemless as a Limehouse junk-shop. Then, his approach advertised by a loud banging of doors, Muir Torrington returned, drawing furiously at a briar pipe which palpably had gone out.
"I had two very important engagements to-night," he explained, "but no doubt Curtis put things right for me. Ah!" He picked up the works of Hadrian von Gühl and returned them to their shelf. "How's the pancreas? Fit? Good! To carry on where I left off."
He stopped, helped himself to a drink, and set out upon one of his restless promenades, now opening a book at random, closing it, and tossing the volume on a table or on the floor; now adjusting an ornament on the mantelshelf; and continuously striking matches which burned down to his fingers before being dropped and stamped underfoot.
"I wasn't content to let the thing rest, Carey. Mysteries are my vice. I found myself wondering about Trepniak. The figure of the man haunted me. So to-night, having been called out to a patient in the Marble Arch neighbourhood, I walked back along Park Lane trying to think of any reasonable excuse for calling. I was not 'dressed'—idiotic expression—but you know what I mean; I never dress unless I can't avoid it, and, as it happened, this was all to the good. Just as I passed Trepniak's place, walking very slowly, someone came out from the servants' quarters.
"There was no sign of life about the house, no light; and this individual came up from below, closed the gate, and crept out just ahead of me. When I say 'crept out,' I mean 'crept out,' Carey. No one else was passing at the moment, and although the man did not look at me—could not possibly have identified me again—I sensed the fact in some way that he had hoped to leave unnoticed."
Carey, closely watching the speaker, interrupted:
"Your description suggests a thief."