The old Master of Arts had a great reputation in the house where he
lived for knowing everything that was going on. He rather enjoyed it;
and sometimes amused himself with surprising his simple-hearted landlady
and her boarders with the unaccountable results of his sagacity. One
thing was quite beyond her comprehension. She was perfectly sure that
Mr. Gridley could see out of the back of his head, just as other people
see with their natural organs. Time and again he had told her what
she was doing when his back was turned to her, just as if he had been
sitting squarely in front of her. Some laughed at this foolish notion;
but others, who knew more of the nebulous sciences, told her it was
like's not jes' so. Folks had read letters laid ag'in' the pits o' their
stomachs, 'n' why should n't they see out o' the backs o' their heads?
Now there was a certain fact at the bottom of this belief of Mrs.
Hopkins; and as it world be a very small thing to make a mystery of so
simple a matter, the reader shall have the whole benefit of knowing all
there is in it,--not quite yet, however, of knowing all that came of it.
It was not the mirror trick, of course, which Mrs. Felix Lorraine and
other dangerous historical personages have so long made use of. It was
nothing but this: Mr. Byles Gridley wore a pair of formidable spectacles
with large round glasses. He had often noticed the reflection of objects
behind him when they caught their images at certain angles, and had got
the habit of very often looking at the reflecting surface of one or the
other of the glasses, when he seemed to be looking through them. It put
a singular power into his possession, which might possibly hereafter
lead to something more significant than the mystification of the Widow
Hopkins.
A short time before Myrtle Hazard's disappearance, Mr. Byles Gridley had
occasion to call again at the office of Penhallow and Bradshaw on some
small matter of business of his own. There were papers to look over, and
he put on his great round-glassed spectacles. He and Mr. Penhallow sat
down at the table, and Mr. Bradshaw was at a desk behind them. After
sitting for a while, Mr. Penhallow seemed to remember something he had
meant to attend to, for he said all at once: “Excuse me, Mr. Gridley.
Mr. Bradshaw, if you are not busy, I wish you would look over this
bundle of papers. They look like old receipted bills and memoranda of no
particular use; but they came from the garret of the Withers place, and
might possibly have something that would be of value. Look them over,
will you, and see whether there is anything there worth saving.”
The young man took the papers, and Mr. Penhallow sat down again at the
table with Mr. Byles Gridley.
This last-named gentleman felt just then a strong impulse to observe
the operations of Murray Bradshaw. He could not have given any very good
reason for it, any more than any of us can for half of what we do.
“I should like to examine that conveyance we were speaking of once
more,” said he. “Please to look at this one in the mean time, will you,
Mr. Penhallow?”
Master Gridley held the document up before him. He did not seem to find
it quite legible, and adjusted his spectacles carefully, until they were
just as he wanted them. When he had got them to suit himself, sitting
there with his back to Murray Bradshaw, he could see him and all his
movements, the desk at which he was standing, and the books in the
shelves before him,--all this time appearing as if he were intent upon
his own reading.
The young man began in a rather indifferent way to look over the papers.
He loosened the band round them, and took them up one by one, gave a
careless glance at them, and laid them together to tie up again when
he had gone through them. Master Gridley saw all this process, thinking
what a fool he was all the time to be watching such a simple proceeding.
Presently he noticed a more sudden movement: the young man had found
something which arrested his attention, and turned his head to see if
he was observed. The senior partner and his client were both apparently
deep in their own affairs. In his hand Mr. Bradshaw held a paper folded
like the others, the back of which he read, holding it in such a way
that Master Gridley saw very distinctly three large spots of ink upon
it, and noticed their position. Murray Bradshaw took another hurried
glance at the two gentlemen, and then quickly opened the paper. He ran
it over with a flash of his eye, folded it again, and laid it by itself.
With another quick turn of his head, as if to see whether he were
observed or like to be, he reached his hand out and took a volume down
from the shelves. In this volume he shut the document, whatever it was,
which he had just taken out of the bundle, and placed the book in a very
silent and as it were stealthy way back in its place. He then gave a
look at each of the other papers, and said to his partner: “Old bills,
old leases, and insurance policies that have run out. Malachi seems to
have kept every scrap of paper that had a signature to it.”
“That 's the way with the old misers, always,” said Mr. Penhallow.
Byles Gridley had got through reading the document he held,--or
pretending to read it. He took off his spectacles.
“We all grow timid and cautious as we get old, Mr. Penhallow.” Then
turning round to the young man, he slowly repeated the lines,
“'Multa senem circumveniunt incommoda, vel quod
Quaerit et inventis miser abstinet, ac timet uti;
Vel quod res omnes timide, gelideque ministrat'
“You remember the passage, Mr. Bradshaw?”
While he was reciting these words from Horace, which he spoke slowly
as if he relished every syllable, he kept his eyes on the young man
steadily, but with out betraying any suspicion. His old habits as a
teacher made that easy.
Murray Bradshaw's face was calm as usual, but there was a flush on
his cheek, and Master Gridley saw the slight but unequivocal signs of
excitement.
“Something is going on inside there,” the old man said to himself. He
waited patiently, on the pretext of business, until Mr. Bradshaw got up
and left the office. As soon as he and the senior partner were alone,
Master Gridley took a lazy look at some of the books in his library.
There stood in the book-shelves a copy of the Corpus Juris Civilis,--the
fine Elzevir edition of 1664. It was bound in parchment, and thus
readily distinguishable at a glance from all the books round it. Now
Mr. Penhallow was not much of a Latin scholar, and knew and cared
very little about the civil law. He had fallen in with this book at
an auction, and bought it to place in his shelves with the other
“properties” of the office, because it would look respectable. Anything
shut up in one of those two octavos might stay there a lifetime without
Mr. Penhallow's disturbing it; that Master Gridley knew, and of course
the young man knew it too.
We often move to the objects of supreme curiosity or desire, not in
the lines of castle or bishop on the chess-board, but with the knight's
zigzag, at first in the wrong direction, making believe to ourselves we
are not after the thing coveted. Put a lump of sugar in a canary-bird's
cage, and the small creature will illustrate the instinct for the
benefit of inquirers or sceptics. Byles Gridley went to the other side
of the room and took a volume of Reports from the shelves. He put it
back and took a copy of “Fearne on Contingent Remainders,” and looked at
that for a moment in an idling way, as if from a sense of having nothing
to do. Then he drew the back of his forefinger along the books on the
shelf, as if nothing interested him in them, and strolled to the shelf
in front of the desk at which Murray Bradshaw had stood. He took down
the second volume of the Corpus Juris Civilis, turned the leaves over
mechanically, as if in search of some title, and replaced it.
He looked round for a moment. Mr. Penhallow was writing hard at his
table, not thinking of him, it was plain enough. He laid his hand on the
FIRST volume of the Corpus Juris Civilis. There was a document shut up
in it. His hand was on the book, whether taking it out or putting
it back was not evident, when the door opened and Mr. William Murray
Bradshaw entered.
“Ah, Mr. Gridley,” he said, “you are not studying the civil law, are
you?” He strode towards him as he spoke, his face white, his eyes fixed
fiercely on him.
“It always interests me, Mr. Bradshaw,” he answered, “and this is a fine
edition of it. One may find a great many valuable things in the Corpus
Juris Civilis.”
He looked impenetrable, and whether or not he had seen more than Mr.
Bradshaw wished him to see, that gentleman could not tell. But there
stood the two books in their place, and when, after Master Gridley had
gone, he looked in the first volume, there was the document he had shut
up in it.