It is a very curious thing how, when once your attention is attracted to any particular set of circumstances, that set of circumstances seems to haunt you. You get appendicitis: immediately the newspapers are filled with paragraphs about statesmen suffering from appendicitis and victims dying of it; you learn that all your acquaintances have had it, or know friends who have had it and either died of it, or recovered from it with more surprising and spectacular rapidity than yourself; you cannot open a popular magazine without seeing its cure mentioned as one of the triumphs of modern surgery, or dip into a scientific treatise without coming across a comparison of the vermiform appendix in men and monkeys. Probably these references to appendicitis are equally frequent at all times, but you only notice them when your mind is attuned to the subject. At any rate, it was in this way that Pender accounted to himself for the extra-ordinary frequency with which people seemed to die in their baths at this period.
The thing pursued him at every turn. Always the same sequence of events: the hot bath, the discovery of the corpse, the inquest. Always the same medical opinion: heart failure following immersion in too hot water. It began to seem to Pender that it was scarcely safe to enter a hot bath at all. He took to making his own bath cooler and cooler each day, until it almost ceased to be enjoyable.
He skimmed his paper each morning for headlines about baths before settling down to read the news; and was at once relieved and vaguely disappointed if a week passed without a hot-bath tragedy.
One of the sudden deaths that occurred in this way was that of a young and beautiful woman whose husband, an analytical chemist, had tried without success to divorce her a few months previously.
The coroner displayed a tendency to suspect foul play, and put the husband through a severe cross-examination. There seemed, however, to be no getting behind the doctor’s evidence. Pender, brooding over the improbable possible, wished, as he did every day of the week, that he could remember the name of that drug the man in the train had mentioned.
Then came the excitement in Pender’s own neighborhood. An old Mr. Skimmings, who lived alone with a housekeeper in a street just around the corner, was found dead in his bathroom. His heart had never been strong. The housekeeper told the milkman that she had always expected something of the sort to happen, for the old gentleman would always take his bath so hot. Pender went to the inquest.
The housekeeper gave her evidence. Mr. Skimmings had been the kindest of employers, and she was heartbroken at losing him. No, she had not been aware that Mr. Skimmings had left her a large sum of money, but it was just like his goodness of heart. The verdict of course was accidental death.
Pender, that evening, went out for his usual stroll with the dog.
Some feeling of curiosity moved him to go around past the late Mr.
Skimmings’s house. As he loitered by, glancing up at the blank windows, the garden gate opened and a man came out. In the light of a street lamp, Pender recognized him at once.
“Hullo!” he said.
“Oh, it’s you, is it?” said the man. “Viewing the site of the tragedy, eh? What do you think about it all?”
“Oh, nothing very much,” said Pender. “I didn’t know him. Odd, our meeting again like this.”
“Yes, isn’t it? You live near here, I suppose.”
“Yes,” said Pender; and then wished he hadn’t. “Do you live in these parts too?”
“Me?” said the man. “Oh no. I was only here on a little matter of business.”
“Last time we met,” said Pender, “you had business at Rugby.”
They had fallen into step together, and were walking slowly down to the turning Pender had to take in order to reach his house.
“So I had,” agreed the other man. “My business takes me all over the country. I never know where I may be wanted next, you see.”
“It was while you were at Rugby that old Brittlesea was found dead in his bath, wasn’t it?” remarked Pender carelessly.
“Yes. Funny thing, coincidence.” The man glanced up at him sideways through his glittering glasses. “Left all his money to his wife, didn’t he? She’s a rich woman now. Good-looking girl — a lot younger than he was.”
They were passing Pender’s gate. “Come in and have a drink,”
said Pender, and again immediately regretted the impulse.
The man accepted, and they went into Pender’s bachelor study.
“Remarkable lot of these bath deaths lately,” observed Pender as he squirted soda into the tumblers.
“You think it’s remarkable?” said the man, with his irritating trick of querying everything that was said to him. “Well, I don’t know.
Perhaps it is. But it’s always a fairly common accident.”
“I suppose I’ve been taking more notice on account of that conversation we had in the train.” Pender laughed, a little self-consciously.
“It just makes me wonder — you know how one does — whether anybody else had happened to hit on that drug you mentioned — what was its name?”
The man ignored the question.
“Oh, I shouldn’t think so,” he said. “I fancy I’m the only person who knows about that. I only stumbled on the thing by accident myself when I was looking for something else. I don’t imagine it could have been discovered simultaneously in so many parts of the country. But all these verdicts just show, don’t they, what a safe way it would be of getting rid of a person.”
“You’re a chemist, then?” asked Pender, catching at the one phrase which seemed to promise information.
“Oh, I’m a bit of everything. Sort of general utility man. I do a good bit of studying on my own, too. You’ve got one or two interesting books here, I see.”
Pender was flattered. For a man in his position — he had been in a bank until he came into that little bit of money — he felt that he had improved his mind to some purpose, and he knew that his collection of modern first editions would be worth money some day. He went over to the glass-fronted bookcase and pulled out a volume or two to show his visitor.
The man displayed intelligence, and presently joined him in front of the shelves.
“These, I take it, represent your personal tastes?” He took down a volume of Henry James and glanced at the fly-leaf. “That your name? E. Pender?”
Pender admitted that it was. “You have the advantage of me,” he added.
“Oh! I am one of the great Smith clan,” said the other with a laugh,
“and work for my bread. You seem to be very nicely fixed here.”
Pender explained about the clerkship and the legacy.
“Very nice, isn’t it?” said Smith. “Not married? No. You’re one of the lucky ones. Not likely to be needing any sulphate of…any useful drugs in the near future. And you never will, if you stick to what you’ve got and keep off women and speculation.”
He smiled up sideways at Pender. Now that his hat was off, Pender saw that he had a quantity of closely curled gray hair, which made him look older than he had appeared in the railway carriage.
“No, I shan’t be coming to you for assistance yet a while,” said Pender, laughing. “Besides, how should I find you if I wanted you?”
“You wouldn’t have to,” said Smith. “I should find you. There’s never any difficulty about that.” He grinned, oddly. “Well, I’d better be getting on. Thank you for your hospitality. I don’t expect we shall meet again — but we may, of course. Things work out so queerly, don’t they?”
When he had gone, Pender returned to his own armchair. He took up his glass of whiskey, which stood there nearly full.
“Funny!” he said to himself. “I don’t remember pouring that out.
I suppose I got interested and did it mechanically.” He emptied his glass slowly, thinking about Smith.