Free Trial and Error by Anthony Berkeley

equanimity the Italian and German nations to their fates and prepared for a peaceful passing.
    Yet for all that, life seemed now excessively flat.
    It was himself that Mr Todhunter had been bluffing. It was he, and probably no one else, who had once foolishly imagined himself capable of great things. And after all, when one has wound oneself up (as one imagines) to tremendous, magnificent action, it is bound to have a depressing effect to find the mainspring under one suddenly turn, as it were, into a piece of chewed string. It is like a high jumper who, taking an enormous run to clear the bar, finds on arriving there that it has been placed, not six feet above the ground, but six inches.
    Nevertheless, though life might now be flat, it was restful. Mr Todhunter grew less irritable, his frayed nerves joined themselves together once more, he sat out in his garden again by day, he began to sleep better at night.
    â€œSeems to have done him good, that attack of his,” opined Edie to Mrs Greenhill. “Been ever so bobbish since, he has.”
    â€œWell, let’s hope he don’t get no more of them,” said Mrs Greenhill devoutly. “Gave me a nasty turn, that one did, and that’s a fact.”
    It was, in short, only after he seemed to have allayed his mental indigestion and settled down once more to the old, comfortable routine of his life, and indeed had already begun to look on the strange urges and compulsions that had stirred in him as a kind of temporary aberration due to shock, that the chance encounter befell Mr Todhunter which was to jerk him out of that routine once more and alter not only the short life remaining to him but the lives of several other people too.
    The meeting took place at Christie’s. It was Mr Todhunter’s pleasure to go occasionally and watch the treasures of the world changing hands. On this occasion a seventeenth-century mazer was up for sale. It had belonged, since it was made, to an obscure little church in Northamptonshire. The early English tower was now in danger of collapsing, as early English towers will; and the incumbent had decided that a substantial tower was more useful to his church than a silver bowl and had therefore obtained the necessary permission to transmute the metal into cement.
    Mr Todhunter had a school friend, a certain Frederick Sleights, to whom he was wont to refer in a somewhat deprecating way as “that chap Sleights.” The deprecation was due to a fear on Mr Todhunter’s part that in referring to Mr Sleights at all he might seem to be claiming acquaintance with the Great; for Mr Sleights wrote novels and, in the opinion of Mr Todhunter, very good novels too. This opinion was, however, not shared by the public at large, few of whom had ever heard of Mr Sleights; so that Mr Todhunter’s deprecation, while well intentioned, was scarcely needed.
    Frederick Sleights and Mr Todhunter would dine occasionally at each other’s houses, and it was inevitable that they should sometimes meet strangers there. These strangers invariably passed straight out of Mr Todhunter’s mind the instant their backs were turned towards the front door; for Mr Todhunter had an atrocious memory for names and faces and even for individuals. It seemed, however, that Mr Todhunter himself did not pass so readily out of the minds of others; for, while he was happily examining the mazer on its green baize cloth prior to the sale, a voice at his side accosted him by name and, when Mr Todhunter looked courteously baffled, reminded him that they had met last year at Sleights’s.
    â€œFarroway!” repeated Mr Todhunter with well simulated enthusiasm, staring at the trimly bearded face of the little man at his side. “Of course I remember. Naturally.” And indeed the name of Farroway, in connection with that neat little pointed beard, did now seem in some way familiar.
    They discussed the points of the bowl and moved on to an early