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_Title:_ The Stranger’s Latchkey
_Date of first publication:_ 1929
_Author:_ Richard Austin Freeman (1862-1943)
_Date first posted:_ July 5, 2018
_Date last updated:_ July 5, 2018
Faded Page eBook #20180722
This ebook was produced by: Delphine Lettau, Mark Akrigg, Jen Haines &
the online Distributed Proofreaders Canada team at
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[Cover Illustration]
8 THE STRANGER’S
LATCHKEY
The contrariety of human nature is a subject that has given a surprising
amount of occupation to makers of proverbs and to those moral
philosophers who make it their province to discover and expound the
glaringly obvious; and especially have they been concerned to enlarge
upon that form of perverseness which engenders dislike of things offered
under compulsion, and arouses desire of them as soon as their attainment
becomes difficult or impossible. They assure us that a man who has had a
given thing within his reach and put it by, will, as soon as it is
beyond his reach, find it the one thing necessary and desirable; even as
the domestic cat which has turned disdainfully from the proffered
saucer, may presently be seen with her head jammed hard in the milk-jug,
or, secretly and with horrible relish, slaking her thirst at the
scullery sink.
To this peculiarity of the human mind was due, no doubt, the fact that
no sooner had I abandoned the clinical side of my profession in favour
of the legal, and taken up my abode in the chambers of my friend
Thorndyke, the famous medico-legal expert, to act as his assistant or
junior, than my former mode of life—that of a locum tenens, or minder
of other men’s practices—which had, when I was following it, seemed
intolerably irksome, now appeared to possess many desirable features;
and I found myself occasionally hankering to sit once more by the
bedside, to puzzle out the perplexing train of symptoms, and to wield
that power—the greatest, after all, possessed by man—the power to
banish suffering and ward off the approach of death itself.
Hence it was that on a certain morning of the long vacation I found
myself installed at The Larches, Burling, in full charge of the practice
of my old friend Dr. Hanshaw, who was taking a fishing holiday in
Norway. I was not left desolate, however, for Mrs. Hanshaw remained at
her post, and the roomy, old-fashioned house accommodated three visitors
in addition. One of these was Dr. Hanshaw’s sister, a Mrs. Haldean, the
widow of a wealthy Manchester cotton factor; the second was her niece by
marriage, Miss Lucy Haldean, a very handsome and charming girl of
twenty-three; while the third was no less a person than Master Fred, the
only child of Mrs. Haldean, and a strapping boy of six.
“It is quite like old times—and very pleasant old times, too—to see
you sitting at our breakfast-table, Dr. Jervis.” With these gracious
words and a friendly smile, Mrs. Hanshaw handed me my tea-cup.
I bowed. “The highest pleasure of the altruist,” I replied, “is in
contemplating the good fortune of others.”
Mrs. Haldean laughed. “Thank you,” she said. “You are quite unchanged, I
perceive. Still as suave and as—shall I say oleaginous?”
“No, please don’t!” I exclaimed in a tone of alarm.
“Then I won’t. But what does Dr. Thorndyke say to this backsliding on
your part? How does he regard this relapse from medical jurisprudence to
common general practice?”
“Thorndyke,” said I, “is unmoved by any catastrophe; and he not only
regards the ‘Decline and Fall-off of the Medical Jurist’ with
philosophic calm, but he even favours the relapse, as you call it. He
thinks it may be useful to me to study the application of medico-legal
methods to general practice.”
“That sounds rather unpleasant—for the patients, I mean,” remarked Miss
Haldean.
“Very,” agreed her aunt. “Most cold-blooded. What sort of man is Dr.
Thorndyke? I feel quite curious about him. Is he at all human, for
instance?”
“He is entirely human,” I replied; “the accepted tests of humanity
being, as I understand, the habitual adoption of the erect posture in
locomotion, and the relative position of the end of the thumb——”
“I don’t mean that,” interrupted Mrs. Haldean. “I mean human in things
that matter.”
“I think those things matter,” I rejoined. “Consider, Mrs. Haldean, what
would happen if my learned colleague were to be seen in wig and gown,
walking towards the Law Courts in any posture other than the erect. It
would be a public scandal.”
“Don’t talk to him, Mabel,” said Mrs. Hanshaw; “he is incorrigible. What
are you doing with yourself this morning, Lucy?”
Miss Haldean (who had hastily set down her cup to laugh at my imaginary
picture of Dr. Thorndyke in the character of a quadruped) considered a
moment.
“I think I shall sketch that group of birches at the edge of Bradham
Wood,” she said.
“Then, in that case,” said I, “I can carry your traps for you, for I
have to see a patient in Bradham.”
“He is making the most of his time,” remarked Mrs. Haldean maliciously
to my hostess. “He knows that when Mr. Winter arrives he will retire
into the extreme background.”
Douglas Winter, whose arrival was expected in the course of the week,
was Miss Haldean’s fiancé. Their engagement had been somewhat
protracted, and was likely to be more so, unless one of them received
some unexpected accession of means; for Douglas was a subaltern in the
Royal Engineers, living, with great difficulty, on his pay, while Lucy
Haldean subsisted on an almost invisible allowance left her by an uncle.
I was about to reply to Mrs. Haldean when a patient was announced, and,
as I had finished my breakfast, I made my excuses and left the table.
Half an hour later, when I started along the road to the village of
Bradham, I had two companions. Master Freddy had joined the party, and
he disputed with me the privilege of carrying the “traps,” with the
result that a compromise was effected, by which he carried the
camp-stool, leaving me in possession of the easel, the bag, and a large
bound sketching-block.
“Where are you going to work this morning?” I asked, when we had trudged
on some distance.
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