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It was at breakfast of the morning following our talk about Jim that he mentioned the place, after I had quoted poor Brierly's remark: "Let him creep twenty feet underground and stay there." He looked up at me with interested attention, as though I had been a rare insect. "This could be done, too," he remarked, sipping his coffee. "Bury him in some sort," I explained.
The position struck me as hopeless, and poor Brierly's saying recurred to me, "Let him creep twenty feet underground and stay there." Better that, I thought, than this waiting above ground for the impossible. Yet one could not be sure even of that. There and then, before his boat was three oars' lengths away from the quay, I had made up my mind to go and consult Stein in the evening.
These comprised John Matthews, Professor Brierly's adopted son and principal assistant; Matthews' sister, Norah, who had recently lost her husband; her four-year-old son, Thomas, and Professor Brierly's housekeeper, Martha, who had been quite certain that without her capable presence, the old savant would be grossly neglected, suffer and die. Jimmy Hale had elected to drive.
Professor Brierly's eyes gleamed with interest as his eyes fell on a series of tubes, some of which resembled radio tubes in their sockets. "Ah," he murmured. "Photo-electric tubes. It should be fairly easy for you to keep apace with that for the reason that this particular branch of science is still in its infancy and we are all groping in the dark.
The boat-swain's mate got the hose along aft to wash down at half-past five; by-and-by he knocks off and runs up on the bridge 'Will you please come aft, Mr. Jones, he says. 'There's a funny thing. I don't like to touch it. It was Captain Brierly's gold chronometer watch carefully hung under the rail by its chain. "As soon as my eyes fell on it something struck me, and I knew, sir.
And there was a voice within him which kept whispering as did the one which counselled the abandonment of his illegal calling, the abandonment of that other effort, infinitely dearer to him, to win Madge Brierly's love and hand in marriage.
"S'long, Jimmy, remember we're runnin' a daily paper and not a quarterly." This was Hite's usual formula. Jimmy now decided to charter a swift motor boat. Professor Brierly's camp and Justice Higginbotham's camp were both a considerable distance off the main road.
He had missed something from Professor Brierly's speech. There was not his wonted incisiveness and crispness. The reporter looked sharply at the old man. Jimmy's mind cleared; he became convinced that Professor Brierly was hiding something, was withholding something he had learned in New York. He did not, as he was accustomed to do, explain in elaborate detail.
The prisoner looked at him a long time, then he burst out. "What the hell is this? What's the watch got to do with " "Do you care to answer the question, Mr. Boyle?" asked the old scientist. There was something in Professor Brierly's demeanor that made the prisoner change his mind and his manner. He answered politely: "A pocket watch, sir." "How long have you had the watch?"
There was pain in Professor Brierly's eyes, and not the exhilaration to be found at the successful conclusion of an experiment in science; or the completed solution of a crime. He sat down and appeared reluctant to furnish the explanation that was expected of him. Suddenly Justice Higginbotham burst out: "But this is unthinkable, Professor. He was a comrade of ours.
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