Part 24

“Let me see,” said Thorndyke, “I think I used to meet Highley sometimes--a tall, dark man, isn’t he?”

“No, that would be Burt. Highley is a little, fairish man, rather bald, with a pretty rich complexion”--here Mr. Larkin tapped his nose knowingly and raised his little finger--“which may account for the falling off of business.”

“Hadn’t we better have a look at the rooms?” Miller interrupted a little impatiently.

“Can we see them, Mr. Larkin?” asked Thorndyke.

“Certainly,” was the reply. “You’ve got the key. Let me have it when you’ve seen the rooms; and whatever you do,” he added with a broad grin, “be careful of the furniture.”

“It looks,” the Superintendent remarked as we crossed the inner court, “as if Mr. Carrington had done a mizzle. That’s hopeful. And I see,” he continued, glancing at the fresh paint on the door-post as we passed through the entry, “that he hasn’t been here long. That’s hopeful, too.”

We ascended to the first floor, and as Thorndyke unlocked and threw open the door, Miller laughed aloud. The “costly furniture” consisted of a small kitchen table, a Windsor chair and a dilapidated deck-chair. The kitchen contained a gas ring, a small saucepan and a frying-pan, and the bedroom was furnished with a camp-bed devoid of bed-clothes, a washhand basin on a packing case, and a water can.

“Hallo!” exclaimed the Superintendent. “He’s left a hat behind. Quite a good hat, too.” He took it down from the peg, glanced at its exterior and then, turning it over, looked inside. And then his mouth opened with a jerk.

“Great Solomon Eagle!” he gasped. “Do you see, Doctor? It’s the hat.”

He held it out to us, and sure enough on the white silk lining of the crown were the embossed, gilt letters, D.B., just as Mr. Byramji had described them.

“Yes,” Thorndyke agreed, as the Superintendent snatched up a greengrocer’s paper bag from the kitchen floor and persuaded the hat into it, “it is undoubtedly the missing link. But what are you going to do now?”

“Do!” exclaimed Miller. “Why, I am going to collar the man. These Baltic boats put in at Hull and Newcastle--perhaps he didn’t know that--and they are pretty slow boats, too. I shall wire to Newcastle to have the ship detained and take Inspector Badger down to make the arrest. I’ll leave you to explain to the porter, and I owe you a thousand thanks for your valuable tip.”

With this he bustled away, clasping the precious hat, and from the window we saw him hurry across the court and dart out through the postern into Fetter Lane.

“I think Miller was rather precipitate,” said Thorndyke. “He should have got a description of the man and some further particulars.”

“Yes,” said I. “Miller had much better have waited until you had finished with Mr. Larkin. But you can get some more particulars when we take back the key.”

“We shall get more information from the gentleman who lives on the floor above, and I think we will go up and interview him now. I wrote to him last night and made a metallurgical appointment, signing myself W. Polton. Your name, if he should ask, is Stevenson.”

As we ascended the stairs to the next floor, I meditated on the rather tortuous proceedings of my usually straightforward colleague. The use of the lumps of quartz was now obvious; but why these mysterious tactics? And why, before knocking at the door, did Thorndyke carefully take the reading of the gas meter on the landing?

The door was opened in response to our knock by a shortish, alert-looking, clean-shaved man in a white overall, who looked at us keenly and rather forbiddingly. But Thorndyke was geniality personified.

“How do you do, Mr. Highley?” said he, holding out his hand, which the metallurgist shook coolly. “You got my letter, I suppose?”

“Yes. But I am not Mr. Highley. He’s away and I am carrying on. I think of taking over his business, if there is any to take over. My name is Sherwood. Have you got the samples?”

Thorndyke produced the canvas bag, which Mr. Sherwood took from him and emptied out on a bench, picking up the lumps of quartz one by one and examining them closely. Meanwhile Thorndyke took a rapid survey of the premises. Against the wall were two cupel furnaces and a third larger furnace like a small pottery kiln. On a set of narrow shelves were several rows of bone-ash cupels, looking like little white flower-pots, and near them was the cupel-press--an appliance into which powdered bone-ash was fed and compressed by a plunger to form the cupels--while by the side of the press was a tub of bone-ash--a good deal coarser, I noticed, than the usual fine powder. This coarseness was also observed by Thorndyke, who edged up to the tub and dipped his hand into the ash and then wiped his fingers on his handkerchief.

“This stuff doesn’t seem to contain much gold,” said Mr. Sherwood. “But we shall see when we make the assay.”

“What do you think of this?” asked Thorndyke, taking from his pocket the small lump of glittering, golden-looking mineral that he had picked out at the assayist’s. Mr. Sherwood took it from him and examined it closely. “This looks more hopeful,” said he; “rather rich, in fact.”

Thorndyke received this statement with an unmoved countenance; but as for me, I stared at Mr. Sherwood in amazement. For this lump of glittering mineral was simply a fragment of common iron pyrites! It would not have deceived a schoolboy, much less a metallurgist.

Still holding the specimen, and taking a watchmaker’s lens from a shelf, Mr. Sherwood moved over to the window. Simultaneously, Thorndyke stepped softly to the cupel shelves and quickly ran his eye along the rows of cupels. Presently he paused at one, examined it more closely, and then, taking it from the shelf, began to pick at it with his finger-nail.

At this moment Mr. Sherwood turned and observed him; and instantly there flashed into the metallurgist’s face an expression of mingled anger and alarm.

“Put that down!” he commanded peremptorily, and then, as Thorndyke continued to scrape with his finger-nail, he shouted furiously, “Do you hear? Drop it!”

Thorndyke took him literally at his word and let the cupel fall on the floor, when it shattered into innumerable fragments, of which one of the largest separated itself from the rest. Thorndyke pounced upon it and in an instantaneous glance as he picked it up, I recognized it as a calcined tooth.