""You can scarcely be called a skeleton," said Dr. Eames, smiling.
""That comes of being so much at the feast," answered the ma.s.sive youth.
"No skeleton can keep his figure if he is always dining out.
But that is not quite what I meant: what I mean is that I caught a kind of glimpse of the meaning of death and all that--the skull and cross-bones, the ~memento mori~. It isn"t only meant to remind us of a future life, but to remind us of a present life too.
With our weak spirits we should grow old in eternity if we were not kept young by death. Providence has to cut immortality into lengths for us, as nurses cut the bread and b.u.t.ter into fingers."
"Then he added suddenly in a voice of unnatural actuality, "But I know something now, Eames. I knew it when I saw the clouds turn pink."
""What do you mean?" asked Eames. "What did you know?"
""I knew for the first time that murder is really wrong."
"He gripped Dr. Eames"s hand and groped his way somewhat unsteadily to the door. Before he had vanished through it he had added, "It"s very dangerous, though, when a man thinks for a split second that he understands death."
"Dr. Eames remained in repose and rumination some hours after his late a.s.sailant had left. Then he rose, took his hat and umbrella, and went for a brisk if rotatory walk. Several times, however, he stood outside the villa with the spotted blinds, studying them intently with his head slightly on one side.
Some took him for a lunatic and some for an intending purchaser.
He is not yet sure that the two characters would be widely different.
"The above narrative has been constructed on a principle which is, in the opinion of the undersigned persons, new in the art of letters.
Each of the two actors is described as he appeared to the other.
But the undersigned persons absolutely guarantee the exact.i.tude of the story; and if their version of the thing be questioned, they, the undersigned persons, would deucedly well like to know who does know about it if they don"t.
"The undersigned persons will now adjourn to "The Spotted Dog"
for beer. Farewell.
"(Signed) James Emerson Eames, "Warden of Brakespeare College, Cambridge.
"Innocent Smith."
Chapter II
The Two Curates; or, the Burglary Charge
Arthur Inglewood handed the doc.u.ment he had just read to the leaders of the prosecution, who examined it with their heads together.
Both the Jew and the American were of sensitive and excitable stocks, and they revealed by the jumpings and b.u.mpings of the black head and the yellow that nothing could be done in the way of denial of the doc.u.ment.
The letter from the Warden was as authentic as the letter from the Sub-Warden, however regrettably different in dignity and social tone.
"Very few words," said Inglewood, "are required to conclude our case in this matter. Surely it is now plain that our client carried his pistol about with the eccentric but innocent purpose of giving a wholesome scare to those whom he regarded as blasphemers. In each case the scare was so wholesome that the victim himself has dated from it as from a new birth.
Smith, so far from being a madman, is rather a mad doctor-- he walks the world curing frenzies and not distributing them.
That is the answer to the two unanswerable questions which I put to the prosecutors. That is why they dared not produce a line by any one who had actually confronted the pistol.
All who had actually confronted the pistol confessed that they had profited by it. That was why Smith, though a good shot, never hit anybody. He never hit anybody because he was a good shot.
His mind was as clear of murder as his hands are of blood.
This, I say, is the only possible explanation of these facts and of all the other facts. No one can possibly explain the Warden"s conduct except by believing the Warden"s story.
Even Dr. Pym, who is a very factory of ingenious theories, could find no other theory to cover the case."
"There are promising per-spectives in hypnotism and dual personality,"
said Dr. Cyrus Pym dreamily; "the science of criminology is in its infancy, and--"
"Infancy!" cried Moon, jerking his red pencil in the air with a gesture of enlightenment; "why, that explains it!"
"I repeat," proceeded Inglewood, "that neither Dr. Pym nor any one else can account on any other theory but ours for the Warden"s signature, for the shots missed and the witnesses missing."
The little Yankee had slipped to his feet with some return of a c.o.c.k-fighting coolness. "The defence," he said, "omits a coldly colossal fact. They say we produce none of the actual victims. Wal, here is one victim--England"s celebrated and stricken Warner. I reckon he is pretty well produced.
And they suggest that all the outrages were followed by reconciliation. Wal, there"s no flies on England"s Warner; and he isn"t reconciliated much."
"My learned friend," said Moon, getting elaborately to his feet, "must remember that the science of shooting Dr. Warner is in its infancy.
Dr. Warner would strike the idlest eye as one specially difficult to startle into any recognition of the glory of G.o.d. We admit that our client, in this one instance, failed, and that the operation was not successful.
But I am empowered to offer, on behalf of my client, a proposal for operating on Dr. Warner again, at his earliest convenience, and without further fees."
""Ang it all, Michael," cried Gould, quite serious for the first time in his life, "you might give us a bit of bally sense for a chinge."
"What was Dr. Warner talking about just before the first shot?"
asked Moon sharply.
"The creature," said Dr. Warner superciliously, "asked me, with characteristic rationality, whether it was my birthday."
"And you answered, with characteristic sw.a.n.k," cried Moon, shooting out a long lean finger, as rigid and arresting as the pistol of Smith, "that you didn"t keep your birthday."
"Something like that," a.s.sented the doctor.
"Then," continued Moon, "he asked you why not, and you said it was because you didn"t see that birth was anything to rejoice over. Agreed? Now is there any one who doubts that our tale is true?"
There was a cold crash of stillness in the room; and Moon said, "Pax populi vox Dei; it is the silence of the people that is the voice of G.o.d. Or in Dr. Pym"s more civilized language, it is up to him to open the next charge.
On this we claim an acquittal."
It was about an hour later. Dr. Cyrus Pym had remained for an unprecedented time with his eyes closed and his thumb and finger in the air.
It almost seemed as if he had been "struck so," as the nurses say; and in the deathly silence Michael Moon felt forced to relieve the strain with some remark. For the last half-hour or so the eminent criminologist had been explaining that science took the same view of offences against property as it did of offences against life.
"Most murder," he had said, "is a variation of homicidal mania, and in the same way most theft is a version of kleptomania.
I cannot entertain any doubt that my learned friends opposite adequately con-ceive how this must involve a scheme of punishment more tol"rant and humane than the cruel methods of ancient codes.
They will doubtless exhibit consciousness of a chasm so eminently yawning, so thought-arresting, so--" It was here that he paused and indulged in the delicate gesture to which allusion has been made; and Michael could bear it no longer.
"Yes, yes," he said impatiently, "we admit the chasm.
The old cruel codes accuse a man of theft and send him to prison for ten years. The tolerant and humane ticket accuses him of nothing and sends him to prison for ever.
We pa.s.s the chasm."
It was characteristic of the eminent Pym, in one of his trances of verbal fastidiousness, that he went on, unconscious not only of his opponent"s interruption, but even of his own pause.
"So stock-improving," continued Dr. Cyrus Pym, "so fraught with real high hopes of the future. Science therefore regards thieves, in the abstract, just as it regards murderers.
It regards them not as sinners to be punished for an arbitrary period, but as patients to be detained and cared for," (his first two digits closed again as he hesitated)--"in short, for the required period.
But there is something special in the case we investigate here.
Kleptomania commonly con-joins itself--"