MrPond

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Title: The Paradoxes of Mr Pond (1937)

Author: G. K. Chesterton

CONTENTS

I. The Three Horsemen of Apocalypse

II. The Crime of Captain Gahagan

III. When Doctors Agree

IV. Pond the Pantaloon

V. The Unmentionable Man

VI. Ring of Lovers

VII. The Terrible Troubadour

VIII. A Tall Story

THE THREE HORSEMEN OF APOCALYPSE

The curious and sometimes creepy effect which Mr. Pond produced

upon me, despite his commonplace courtesy and dapper decorum, was

possibly connected with some memories of childhood; and the vague

verbal association of his name. He was a Government official who

was an old friend of my father; and I fancy my infantile

imagination had somehow mixed up the name of Mr. Pond with the pond

in the garden. When one came to think of it, he was curiously like

the pond in the garden. He was so quiet at all normal times, so

neat in shape and so shiny, so to speak, in his ordinary

reflections of earth and sky and the common daylight. And yet I

knew there were some queer things in the pond in the garden. Once

in a hundred times, on one or two days during the whole year, the

pond would look oddly different; or there would come a flitting

shadow or a flash in its flat serenity; and a fish or a frog or

some more grotesque creature would show itself to the sky. And I

knew there were monsters in Mr. Pond also: monsters in his mind

which rose only for a moment to the surface and sank again. They

took the form of monstrous remarks, in the middle of all his mild

and rational remarks. Some people thought he had suddenly gone mad

in the midst of his sanest conversation. But even they had to

admit that he must have suddenly gone sane again.

Perhaps, again, this foolish fantasy was fixed in the youthful mind

because, at certain moments, Mr. Pond looked rather like a fish

himself. His manners were not only quite polite but quite

conventional; his very gestures were conventional, with the

exception of one occasional trick of plucking at his pointed beard

which seemed to come on him chiefly when he was at last forced to

be serious about one of his strange and random statements. At such

moments he would stare owlishly in front of him and pull his beard,

which had a comic effect of pulling his mouth open, as if it were

the mouth of a puppet with hairs for wires. This odd, occasional

opening and shutting of his mouth, without speech, had quite a

startling similarity to the slow gaping and gulping of a fish. But

it never lasted for more than a few seconds, during which, I

suppose, he swallowed the unwelcome proposal of explaining what on

earth he meant.

He was talking quite quietly one day to Sir Hubert Wotton, the well-

known diplomatist; they were seated under gaily-striped tents or

giant parasols in our own garden, and gazing towards the pond which

I had perversely associated with him. They happened to be talking

about a part of the world that both of them knew well, and very few

people in Western Europe at all: the vast flats fading into fens

and swamps that stretch across Pomerania and Poland and Russia and

the rest; right away, for all I know, into the Siberian deserts.

And Mr. Pond recalled that, across a region where the swamps are

deepest and intersected by pools and sluggish rivers, there runs a

single road raised on a high causeway with steep and sloping sides:

a straight path safe enough for the ordinary pedestrian, but barely

broad enough for two horsemen to ride abreast. That is the

beginning of the story.

It concerned a time not very long ago, but a time in which horsemen

were still used much more than they are at present, though already

rather less as fighters than as couriers. Suffice it to say that

it was in one of the many wars that have laid waste that part of

the world—in so far as it is possible to lay waste such a

wilderness. Inevitably it involved the pressure of the Prussian

system on the nation of the Poles, but beyond that it is not

necessary to expound the politics of the matter, or discuss its

rights and wrongs here. Let us merely say, more lightly, that Mr.

Pond amused the company with a riddle.

“I expect you remember hearing,” said Pond, “of all the excitement

there was about Paul Petrowski, the poet from Cracow, who did two

things rather dangerous in those days: moving from Cracow and going

to live in Poznan; and trying to combine being a poet with being a

patriot. The town he was living in was held at the moment by the

Prussians; it was situated exactly at the eastern end of the long

causeway; the Prussian command having naturally taken care to hold

the bridgehead of such a solitary bridge across such a sea of

swamps. But their base for that particular operation was at the

western end of the causeway; the celebrated Marshal Von Grock was

in general command; and, as it happened, his own old regiment,

which was still his favourite regiment, the White Hussars, was

posted nearest to the beginning of the great embanked road. Of

course, everything was spick and span, down to every detail of the

wonderful white uniforms, with the flame-coloured baldrick slung

across them; for this was just before the universal use of colours

like mud and clay for all the uniforms in the world. I don’t blame

them for that; I sometimes feel the old epoch of heraldry was a

finer thing than all that epoch of imitative colouring, that came

in with natural history and the worship of chameleons and beetles.

Anyhow, this crack regiment of cavalry in the Prussian service

still wore its own uniform; and, as you will see, that was another

element in the fiasco. But it wasn’t only the uniforms; it was the

uniformity. The whole thing went wrong because the discipline was

too good. Grock’s soldiers obeyed him too well; so he simply

couldn’t do a thing he wanted.”

“I suppose that’s a paradox,” said Wotton, heaving a sigh. “Of

course, it’s very clever and all that; but really, it’s all

nonsense, isn’t it? Oh, I know people say in a general way that

there’s too much discipline in the German army. But you can’t have

too much discipline in an army.”

“But I don’t say it in a general way,” said Pond plaintively. “I

say it in a particular way, about this particular case. Grock

failed because his soldiers obeyed him. Of course, if ONE of his

soldiers had obeyed him, it wouldn’t have been so bad. But when

TWO of his soldiers obeyed him—why, really, the poor old devil had

no chance.”

Wotton laughed in a guttural fashion. “I’m glad to hear your new

military theory. You’d allow one soldier in a regiment to obey

orders; but two soldiers obeying orders strikes you as carrying

Prussian discipline a bit too far.”

“I haven’t got any military theory. I’m talking about a military

fact,” replied Mr. Pond placidly. “It is a military fact that

Grock failed, because two of his soldiers obeyed him. It is a

military fact that he might have succeeded, if one of them had

disobeyed him. You can make up what theories you like about it

afterwards.”

“I don’t go in much for theories myself,” said Wotton rather

stiffly, as if he had been touched by a trivial insult.

At this moment could be seen striding across the sun-chequered

lawn, the large and swaggering figure of Captain Gahagan, the

highly incongruous friend and admirer of little Mr. Pond. He had a

flaming flower in his buttonhole and a grey top-hat slightly

slanted upon his ginger-haired head; and he walked with a swagger

that seemed to come out of an older period of dandies and

duellists, though he himself was comparatively young. So long as

his tall, broad-shouldered figure was merely framed against the

sunlight, he looked like the embodiment of all arrogance. When he

came and sat down, with the sun on his face, there was a sudden

contradiction of all this in his very soft brown eyes, which looked

sad and even a little anxious.

Mr. Pond, interrupting his monologue, was almost in a twitter of

apologies: “I’m afraid I’m talking too much, as usual; the truth

is I was talking about that poet, Petrowski, who was nearly

executed in Poznan—quite a long time ago. The military

authorities on the spot hesitated and were going to let him go,

unless they had direct orders from Marshal Von Grock or higher; but

Marshal Von Grock was quite determined on the poet’s death; and

sent orders for his execution that very evening. A reprieve was

sent afterwards to save him; but as the man carrying the reprieve

died on the way, the prisoner was released, after all.”

“But as—” repeated Wotton mechanically.

“The man carrying the REPRIEVE,” added Gahagan somewhat

sarcastically.

“Died on the way,” muttered Wotton.

“Why then, of course, the prisoner was released,” observed Gahagan

in a loud and cheerful voice. “All as clear as clear can be. Tell

us another of those stories, Grandpapa.”

“It’s a perfectly true story,” protested Pond, “and it happened

exactly as I say. It isn’t any paradox or anything like that.

Only, of course, you have to know the story to see how simple it

is.”

“Yes,” agreed Gahagan. “I think I should have to know the story,

before realizing how simple it is.”

“Better tell us the story and have done with it,” said Wotton

shortly.

Paul Petrowski was one of those utterly unpractical men who are of

prodigious importance in practical politics. His power lay in the

fact that he was a national poet but an international singer. That

is, he happened to have a very fine and powerful voice, with which

he sang his own patriotic songs in half the concert halls of the

world. At home, of course, he was a torch and trumpet of

revolutionary hopes, especially then, in the sort of international

crisis in which practical politicians disappear, and their place is

taken by men either more or less practical than themselves. For

the true idealist and the real realist have at least the love of

action in common. And the practical politician thrives by offering

practical objections to any action. What the idealist does may be

unworkable, and what the man of action does may be unscrupulous;

but in neither trade can a man win a reputation by doing nothing.

It is odd that these two extreme types stood at the two extreme

ends of that one ridge and road among the marshes—the Polish poet

a prisoner in the town at one end, the Prussian soldier a commander

in the camp at the other.

For Marshal Von Grock was a true Prussian, not only entirely

practical but entirely prosaic. He had never read a line of poetry

himself; but he was no fool. He had the sense of reality which

belongs to soldiers; and it prevented him from falling into the

asinine error of the practical politician. He did not scoff at

visions; he only hated them. He knew that a poet or a prophet

could be as dangerous as an army. And he was resolved that the

poet should die. It was his one compliment to poetry; and it was

sincere.

He was at the moment sitting at a table in his tent; the spiked

helmet that he always wore in public was lying in front of him; and

his massive head looked quite bald, though it was only closely

shaven. His whole face was also shaven; and had no covering but a

pair of very strong spectacles, which alone gave an enigmatic look

to his heavy and sagging visage. He turned to a Lieutenant

standing by, a German of the pale-haired and rather pudding-faced

variety, whose blue saucer-eyes were staring vacantly.

“Lieutenant Von Hocheimer,” he said, “did you say His Highness

would reach the camp to-night?”

“Seven forty-five, Marshal,” replied the Lieutenant, who seemed

rather reluctant to speak at all, like a large animal learning a

new trick of talking.

“Then there is just time,” said Grock, “to send you with that order

for execution, before he arrives. We must serve His Highness in

every way, but especially in saving him needless trouble. He will

be occupied enough reviewing the troops; see that everything is

placed at His Highness’s disposal. He will be leaving again for

the next outpost in an hour.”

The large Lieutenant seemed partially to come to life and made a

shadowy salute. “Of course, Marshal, we must all obey His

Highness.”

“I said we must all serve His Highness,” said the Marshal.

With a sharper movement than usual, he unhooked his heavy

spectacles and rapped them down upon the table. If the pale blue

eyes of the Lieutenant could have seen anything of the sort, or if

they could have opened any wider even if they had, they might as

well have opened wide enough at the transformation made by the

gesture. It was like the removal of an iron mask. An instant

before, Marshal Von Grock had looked uncommonly like a rhinoceros,

with his heavy folds of leathery cheek and jaw. Now he was a new

kind of monster: a rhinoceros with the eyes of an eagle. The bleak

blaze of his old eyes would have told almost anybody that he had

something within that was not merely heavy; at least, that there

was a part of him made of steel and not only of iron. For all men

live by a spirit, though it were an evil spirit, or one so strange

to the commonalty of Christian men that they hardly know whether it

be good or evil.

“I said we must all serve His Highness,” repeated Grock. “I will

speak more plainly, and say we must all save His Highness. Is it

not enough for our kings that they should be our gods? Is it not

enough for them to be served and saved? It is we who must do the

serving and saving.”

Marshal Von Grock seldom talked, or even thought, as more

theoretical people would count thinking. And it will generally be

found that men of his type, when they do happen to think aloud,

very much prefer to talk to the dog. They have even a certain

patronizing relish in using long words and elaborate arguments

before the dog. It would be unjust to compare Lieutenant Von

Hocheimer to a dog. It would be unjust to the dog, who is a much

more sensitive and vigilant creature. It would be truer to say

that Grock in one of his rare moments of reflection, had the

comfort and safety of feeling that he was reflecting aloud in the

presence of a cow or a cabbage.

“Again and again, in the history of our Royal House, the servant

has saved the master,” went on Grock, “and often got little but

kicks for it, from the outer world at least, which always whines

sentimentalism against the successful and the strong. But at least

we were successful and we were strong. They cursed Bismarck for

deceiving even his own master over the Ems telegram; but it made

that master the master of the world. Paris was taken; Austria

dethroned; and we were safe. To-night Paul Petrowski will be dead;

and we shall again be safe. That is why I am sending you with his

death-warrant at once. You understand that you are bearing the

order for Petrowski’s instant execution—and that you must remain

to see it obeyed?”

The inarticulate Hocheimer saluted; he could understand that all

right. And he had some qualities of a dog, after all: he was as

brave as a bulldog; and he could be faithful to the death.

“You must mount and ride at once,” went on Grock, “and see that

nothing delays or thwarts you. I know for a fact that fool Arnheim

is going to release Petrowski to-night, if no message comes. Make

all speed.”

And the Lieutenant again saluted and went out into the night; and

mounting one of the superb white chargers that were part of the

splendour of that splendid corps, began to ride along the high,

narrow road along the ridge, almost like the top of a wall, which

overlooked the dark horizon, the dim patterns and decaying colours

of those mighty marshes.

Almost as the last echoes of his horse’s hoofs died away along the

causeway, Von Grock rose and put on his helmet and his spectacles

and came to the door of his tent; but for another reason. The

chief men of his staff, in full dress, were already approaching

him; and all along the more distant lines there were the sounds of

ritual salutation and the shouting of orders. His Highness the

Prince had come.

His Highness the Prince was something of a contrast, at least in

externals, to the men around him; and, even in other things,

something of an exception in his world. He also wore a spiked

helmet, but that of another regiment, black with glints of blue

steel; and there was something half incongruous and half

imaginatively appropriate, in some antiquated way, in the

combination of that helmet with the long, dark, flowing beard, amid

all those shaven Prussians. As if in keeping with the long, dark,

flowing beard, he wore a long, dark, flowing cloak, blue with one

blazing star on it of the highest Royal Order; and under the blue

cloak he wore a black uniform. Though as German as any man, he was

a very different kind of German; and something in his proud but

abstracted face was consonant with the legend that the one true

passion of his life was music.

In truth, the grumbling Grock was inclined to connect with that

remote eccentricity the, to him, highly irritating and exasperating

fact that the Prince did not immediately proceed to the proper

review and reception by the troops, already drawn out in all the

labyrinthine parade of the military etiquette of their nation; but

plunged at once impatiently into the subject which Grock most

desired to see left alone: the subject of this infernal Pole, his

popularity and his peril; for the Prince had heard some of the

man’s songs sung in half the opera-houses of Europe.

“To talk of executing a man like that is madness,” said the Prince,

scowling under his black helmet. “He is not a common Pole. He is

a European institution. He would be deplored and deified by our

allies, by our friends, even by our fellow-Germans. Do you want to

be the mad women who murdered Orpheus?”

“Highness,” said the Marshal, “he would be deplored; but he would

be dead. He would be deified; but he would be dead. Whatever he

means to do, he would never do it. Whatever he is doing, he would

do no more. Death is the fact of all facts; and I am rather fond

of facts.”

“Do you know nothing of the world?” demanded the Prince.

“I care nothing for the world,” answered Grock, “beyond the last

black and white post of the Fatherland.”

“God in heaven,” cried His Highness, “you would have hanged Goethe

for a quarrel with Weimar!”

“For the safety of your Royal House,” answered Grock, “without one

instant’s hesitation.”

There was a short silence and the Prince said sharply and suddenly:

“What does this mean?”

“It means that I had not an instant’s hesitation,” replied the

Marshal steadily. “I have already myself sent orders for the

execution of Petrowski.”

The Prince rose like a great dark eagle, the swirl of his cloak

like the sweep of mighty wings; and all men knew that a wrath

beyond mere speech had made him a man of action. He did not even

speak to Von Grock; but talking across him, at the top of his

voice, called out to the second in command, General Von Voglen, a

stocky man with a square head, who had stood in the background as

motionless as a stone.

“Who has the best horse in your cavalry division, General? Who is

the best rider?”

“Arnold Von Schacht has a horse that might beat a racehorse,”

replied the General promptly. “And rides it as well as a jockey.

He is of the White Hussars.”

“Very well,” said the Prince, with the same new ring in his voice.

“Let him ride at once after the man with this mad message and stop

him. I will give him authority, which I think the distinguished

Marshal will not dispute. Bring me pen and ink.”

He sat down, shaking out the cloak, and they brought him writing

materials; and he wrote firmly and with a flourish the order,

overriding all other orders, for the reprieve and release of

Petrowski the Pole.

Then amid a dead silence, in the midst of which old Grock stood

with an unblinking stare like a stone idol of prehistoric times, he

swept out of the room, trailing his mantle and sabre. He was so

violently displeased that no man dared to remind him of the formal

reviewing of the troops. But Arnold Von Schacht, a curly-haired

active youth, looking more like a boy, but wearing more than one

medal on the white uniform of the Hussars, clicked his heels, and

received the folded paper from the Prince; then, striding out, he

sprang on his horse and flew along the high, narrow road like a

silver arrow or a shooting star.

The old Marshal went back slowly and calmly to his tent, slowly and

calmly removed his spiked helmet and his spectacles, and laid them

on the table as before. Then he called out to an orderly just

outside the tent; and bade him fetch Sergeant Schwartz of the White

Hussars immediately.

A minute later, there presented himself before the Marshal a gaunt

and wiry man, with a great scar across his jaw, rather dark for a

German, unless all his colours had been changed by years of smoke

and storm and bad weather. He saluted and stood stiffly at

attention, as the Marshal slowly raised his eyes to him. And vast

as was the abyss between the Imperial Marshal, with Generals under

him, and that one battered non-commissioned officer, it is true

that of all the men who have talked in this tale, these two men

alone looked and understood each other without words.

“Sergeant,” said the Marshal, curtly, “I have seen you twice

before. Once, I think, when you won the prize of the whole army

for marksmanship with the carbine.”

The sergeant saluted and said nothing.

“And once again,” went on Von Grock, “when you were questioned for

shooting that damned old woman who would not give us information

about the ambush. The incident caused considerable comment at the

time, even in some of our own circles. Influence, however, was

exerted on your side. My influence.”

The sergeant saluted again; and was still silent. The Marshal

continued to speak in a colourless but curiously candid way.

“His Highness the Prince has been misinformed and deceived on a

point essential to his own safety and that of the Fatherland.

Under this error, he has rashly sent a reprieve to the Pole

Petrowski, who is to be executed to-night. I repeat: who is to be

executed to-night. You must immediately ride after Von Schacht,

who carried the reprieve, and stop him.”

“I can hardly hope to overtake him, Marshal,” said Sergeant

Schwartz. “He has the swiftest horse in the regiment, and is the

finest rider.”

“I did not tell you to overtake him. I told you to stop him,” said

Grock. Then he spoke more slowly: “A man may often be stopped or

recalled by various signals: by shouting or shooting.” His voice

dragged still more ponderously, but without a pause. “The

discharge of a carbine might attract his attention.”

And then the dark sergeant saluted for the third time; and his grim

mouth was again shut tight.

“The world is changed,” said Grock, “not by what is said, or what

is blamed or praised, but by what is done. The world never

recovers from what is done. At this moment the killing of a man is

a thing that must be done.” He suddenly flashed his brilliant eyes

of steel at the other, and added: “I mean, of course, Petrowski.”

And Sergeant Schwartz smiled still more grimly; and he also,

lifting the flap of the tent, went out into the darkness and

mounted his horse and rode.

The last of the three riders was even less likely than the first to

indulge in imaginative ideas for their own sake. But because he

also was in some imperfect manner human, he could not but feel, on

such a night and such an errand, the oppressiveness of that inhuman

landscape. While he rode along that one abrupt ridge, there spread

out to infinity all round him something a myriad times more inhuman

than the sea. For a man could not swim in it, nor sail boats on

it, nor do anything human with it; he could only sink in it, and

practically without a struggle. The sergeant felt vaguely the

presence of some primordial slime that was neither solid nor liquid

nor capable of any form; and he felt its presence behind the forms

of all things.

He was atheist, like so many thousands of dull, clever men in

Northern Germany; but he was not that happier sort of pagan who can

see in human progress a natural flowering of the earth. That world

before him was not a field in which green or living things evolved

and developed and bore fruit; it was only an abyss in which all

living things would sink for ever as in a bottomless pit; and the

thought hardened him for all the strange duties he had to do in so

hateful a world. The grey-green blotches of flattened vegetation,

seen from above like a sprawling map, seemed more like the chart of

a disease than a development; and the land-locked pools might have

been of poison rather than water. He remembered some humanitarian

fuss or other about the poisoning of pools.

But the reflections of the sergeant, like most reflections of men

not normally reflective, had a root in some subconscious strain on

his nerves and his practical intelligence. The truth was that the

straight road before him was not only dreary, but seemed

interminably long. He would never have believed he could have

ridden so far without catching some distant glimpse of the man he

followed. Von Schacht must indeed have the fleetest of horses to

have got so far ahead already; for, after all, he had only started,

at whatever speed, within a comparatively short time. As Schwartz

had said, he hardly expected to overtake him; but a very realistic

sense of the distances involved had told him that he must very soon

come in sight of him. And then, just as despair was beginning to

descend and spread itself vaguely over the desolate landscape, he

saw him at last.

A white spot, which slightly, slowly, enlarged into something like

a white figure, appeared far ahead, riding furiously. It enlarged

to that extent because Schwartz managed a spurt of riding furiously

himself; but it was large enough to show the faint streak of orange

across the white uniform that marked the regiment of the Hussars.

The winner of the prize for shooting, in the whole army, had hit

the white of smaller targets than that.

He unslung his carbine; and a shock of unnatural noise shook up all

the wild fowl for miles upon the silent marshes. But Sergeant

Schwartz did not trouble about them. What interested him was that,

even at such a distance, he could see the straight, white figure

turn crooked and alter in shape, as if the man had suddenly grown

deformed. He was hanging like a humpback over the saddle; and

Schwartz, with his exact eye and long experience, was certain that

his victim was shot through the body; and almost certain that he

was shot through the heart. Then he brought the horse down with a

second shot; and the whole equestrian group heeled over and slipped

and slid and vanished in one white flash into the dark fenland

below.

The hard-headed sergeant was certain that his work was done. Hard-

headed men of his sort are generally very precise about what they

are doing; that is why they are so often quite wrong about what

they do. He had outraged the comradeship that is the soul of

armies; he had killed a gallant officer who was in the performance

of his duty; he had deceived and defied his sovereign and committed

a common murder without excuse of personal quarrel; but he had

obeyed his superior officer and he had helped to kill a Pole.

These two last facts for the moment filled his mind; and he rode

thoughtfully back again to make his report to Marshal Von Grock.

He had no doubts about the thoroughness of the work he had done.

The man carrying the reprieve was certainly dead; and even if by

some miracle he were only dying, he could not conceivably have

ridden his dead or dying horse to the town in time to prevent the

execution. No; on the whole it was much more practical and prudent

to get back under the wing of his protector, the author of the

desperate project. With his whole strength he leaned on the

strength of the great Marshal.

And truly the great Marshal had this greatness about him; that

after the monstrous thing he had done, or caused to be done, he

disdained to show any fear of facing the facts on the spot or the

compromising possibilities of keeping in touch with his tool. He

and the sergeant, indeed, an hour or so later, actually rode along

the ridge together, till they came to a particular place where the

Marshal dismounted, but bade the other ride on. He wished the

sergeant to go forward to the original goal of the riders, and see

if all was quiet in the town after the execution, or whether there

remained some danger from popular resentment.

“Is it here, then, Marshal?” asked the sergeant in a low voice. “I

fancied it was further on; but it’s a fact the infernal road seemed

to lengthen out like a nightmare.”

“It is here,” answered Grock, and swung himself heavily from saddle

and stirrup, and then went to the edge of the long parapet and

looked down.

The moon had risen over the marshes and gone up strengthening in

splendour and gleaming on dark waters and green scum; and in the

nearest clump of reeds, at the foot of the slope, there lay, as in

a sort of luminous and radiant ruin, all that was left of one of

those superb white horses and white horsemen of his old brigade.

Nor was the identity doubtful; the moon made a sort of aureole of

the curled golden hair of young Arnold, the second rider and the

bearer of the reprieve; and the same mystical moonshine glittered

not only on baldrick and buttons, but on the special medals of the

young soldier and the stripes and signs of his degree. Under such

a glamorous veil of light, he might almost have been in the white

armour of Sir Galahad; and there could scarcely have been a more

horrible contrast than that between such fallen grace and youth

below and the rocky and grotesque figure looking down from above.

Grock had taken off his helmet again; and though it is possible

that this was the vague shadow of some funereal form of respect,

its visible effect was that the queer naked head and neck like that

of a pachyderm glittered stonily in the moon, like the hairless

head and neck of some monster of the Age of Stone. Rops, or some

such etcher of the black, fantastic German schools, might have

drawn such a picture: of a huge beast as inhuman as a beetle

looking down on the broken wings and white and golden armour of

some defeated champion of the Cherubim.

Grock said no prayer and uttered no pity; but in some dark way his

mind was moved, as even the dark and mighty swamp will sometimes

move like a living thing; and as such men will, when feeling for

the first time faintly on their defence before they know not what,

he tried to formulate his only faith and confront it with the stark

universe and the staring moon.

“After and before the deed the German Will is the same. It cannot

be broken by changes and by time, like that of those others who

repent. It stands outside time like a thing of stone, looking

forward and backward with the same face.”

The silence that followed lasted long enough to please his cold

vanity with a certain sense of portent; as if a stone figure had

spoken in a valley of silence. But the silence began to thrill

once more with a distant whisper which was the faint throb of

horsehoofs; and a moment later the sergeant came galloping, or

rather racing, back along the uplifted road, and his scarred and

swarthy visage was no longer merely grim but ghastly in the moon.

“Marshal,” he said, saluting with a strange stiffness, “I have seen

Petrowski the Pole!”

“Haven’t they buried him yet?” asked the Marshal, still staring

down and in some abstraction.

“If they have,” said Schwartz, “he has rolled the stone away and

risen from the dead.”

He stared in front of him at the moon and marshes; but, indeed,

though he was far from being a visionary character, it was not

these things that he saw, but rather the things he had just seen.

He had, indeed, seen Paul Petrowski walking alive and alert down

the brilliantly illuminated main avenue of that Polish town to the

very beginning of the causeway; there was no mistaking the slim

figure with plumes of hair and tuft of Frenchified beard which

figured in so many private albums and illustrated magazines. And

behind him he had seen that Polish town aflame with flags and

firebrands and a population boiling with triumphant hero-worship,

though perhaps less hostile to the government than it might have

been, since it was rejoicing at the release of its popular hero.

“Do you mean,” cried Grock with a sudden croaking stridency of

voice, “that they have dared to release him in defiance of my

message?”

Schwartz saluted again and said:

“They had already released him and they have received no message.”

“Do you ask me, after all this,” said Grock, “to believe that no

messenger came from our camp at all?”

“No messenger at all,” said the sergeant.

There was a much longer silence, and then Grock said, hoarsely:

“What in the name of hell has happened? Can you think of anything

to explain it all?”

“I have seen something,” said the sergeant, “which I think does

explain it all.”

When Mr. Pond had told the story up to this point, he paused with

an irritating blankness of expression.

“Well,” said Gahagan impatiently, “and do YOU know anything that

would explain it all?”

“Well, I think I do,” said Mr. Pond meekly. “You see, I had to

worry it out for myself, when the report came round to my

department. It really did arise from an excess of Prussian

obedience. It also arose from an excess of another Prussian

weakness: contempt. And of all the passions that blind and madden

and mislead men, the worst is the coldest: contempt.

“Grock had talked much too comfortably before the cow, and much too

confidently before the cabbage. He despised stupid men even on his

own staff; and treated Von Hocheimer, the first messenger, as a

piece of furniture merely because he looked like a fool; but the

Lieutenant was not such a fool as he looked. He also understood

what the great Marshal meant, quite as well as the cynical

sergeant, who had done such dirty work all his life. Hocheimer

also understood the Marshal’s peculiar moral philosophy: that an

act is unanswerable even when it is indefensible. He knew that

what his commander wanted was simply the corpse of Petrowski; that

he wanted it anyhow, at the expense of any deception of princes or

destruction of soldiers. And when he heard a swifter horseman

behind him, riding to overtake him, he knew as well as Grock

himself that the new messenger must be carrying with him the

message of the mercy of the Prince. Von Schacht, that very young

but gallant officer, looking like the very embodiment of all that

more generous tradition of Germany that has been too much neglected

in this tale, was worthy of the accident that made him the herald

of a more generous policy. He came with the speed of that noble

horsemanship that has left behind it in Europe the very name of

chivalry, calling out to the other in a tone like a herald’s

trumpet to stop and stand and turn. And Von Hocheimer obeyed. He

stopped, he reined in his horse, he turned in his saddle; but his

hand held the carbine levelled like a pistol, and he shot the boy

between the eyes.

“Then he turned again and rode on, carrying the death-warrant of

the Pole. Behind him horse and man had crashed over the edge of

the embankment, so that the whole road was clear. And along that

clear and open road toiled in his turn the third messenger,

marvelling at the interminable length of his journey; till he saw

at last the unmistakable uniform of a Hussar like a white star

disappearing in the distance, and he shot also. Only he did not

kill the second messenger, but the first.

“That was why no messenger came alive to the Polish town that

night. That was why the prisoner walked out of his prison alive.

Do you think I was quite wrong in saying that Von Grock had two

faithful servants, and one too many?”

THE CRIME OF CAPTAIN GAHAGAN

It must be confessed that some people thought Mr. Pond a bore. He

had a weakness for long speeches, not out of self-importance, but

because he had an old-fashioned taste in literature; and had

unconsciously inherited the habit of Gibbon or Butler or Burke.

Even his paradoxes were not what are called brilliant paradoxes.

The word brilliant has long been the most formidable weapon of

criticism; but Mr. Pond could not be blasted and withered with a

charge of brilliancy. Thus, in the case now to be considered, when

Mr. Pond said (referring, I grieve to say, to the greater part of

the female sex, at least in its most modern phase): “They go so

fast that they get no farther,” he did not mean it as an epigram.

And somehow it did not sound epigrammatic; but only odd and

obscure. And the ladies to whom he said it, notably the Hon.

Violet Varney, could see no sense in it. They thought Mr. Pond,

when he was not boring, was only bewildering.

Anyhow, Mr. Pond did sometimes indulge in long speeches. Triumph

therefore and great glory belongs to anyone who could successfully

stop Mr. Pond from making long speeches; and this laurel is for the

brows of Miss Artemis Asa-Smith, of Pentapolis, Pa. She came to

interview Mr. Pond for The Live Wire, touching his alleged views on

the Haggis Mystery; and she did not let him get a word in edgeways.

“I believe,” began Mr. Pond, rather nervously, “that your paper is

inquiring about what some call Private Execution, and I call

murder, but—”

“Forget it,” said the young lady briefly. “It’s just too wonderful

for me to be sitting here next to all secrets of your government;

why—”

She continued her monologue; though in a style of dots and dashes.

As she would not let Mr. Pond interrupt her, she seemed to think it

only fair to interrupt herself. Somehow it seemed at once as if

her speech would never end; and not one sentence of it was ever

ended.

We have all heard of American interviewers who rip up family

secrets, break down bedroom doors and collect information in the

manner of burglars. There are some; but there are also others.

There are, or were, when the writer remembers them, a very large

number of intelligent men ready to discuss intelligent things; and

there was Miss Asa-Smith. She was small and dark; she was rather

pretty and would have been very pretty if she had not dipped her

lipstick in hues of earthquake and eclipse. Her finger-nails were

painted five different colours, looking like the paints in a

child’s paintbox; and she was as innocent as a child. She was also

as garrulous as a child. She felt something paternal about Mr.

Pond and told him everything. He did not have to tell her

anything. No buried tragedies of the Pond family were dug up; no

secrets of the crimes committed behind Mr. Pond’s bedroom door.

Conversation, so to describe it, revolved largely round her early

days in Pennsylvania; her first ambitions and ideals; which two

things, like many of her local traditions, she seemed to imagine to

be the same. She was a Feminist and had stood up with Ada P. Tuke

against clubs and saloons and the selfishness of man. She had

written a play; and she just longed to read it to Mr. Pond.

“About that question of Private Execution,” said Mr. Pond politely,

“I suppose we’ve all been tempted in desperate moments—”

“Well, I’m just desperate to read you this play, and—you know how

it is. You see, my play’s awfully MODERN. But even the modernest

people haven’t done just that—I mean, beginning in the water and

then—”

“Beginning in the water?” inquired Mr. Pond.

“Yes, isn’t it just too—oh, you know. I suppose they will have

all characters in bathing dresses soon—but they’ll only just enter

L. or R.; come on at the side, you know—and all the old stuff. My

characters enter from above, diving, with a splash—Well, that’ll

be a splash, won’t it? I mean to say, it begins like that.” She

began to read very rapidly:

“Scene, sea outside the Lido.

“Voice of Tom Toxin (from above): ‘See me make a splash, if—’

(Toxin dives from above to stage in pea-green bathing-suit).

“Voice of Duchess (from above): ‘Only sort of splash you’ll ever

make, you—’ (Duchess dives from above in scarlet bathing-suit).

“Toxin (coming up spluttering): ‘Splutter as splutter … splosh

is the only splash by your—.’

“Duchess: ‘Oh, Grandpa!’”

“She calls him Grandpa, you see, because ‘splosh’ means money in

that ever-so-old comic song—they’re quite young really, of course,

and rather … you know. But—”

Mr. Pond interposed with delicacy and firmness: “I wonder whether

you would be so very kind, Miss Asa-Smith, as to leave the

manuscript with me or send me a copy, so that I can enjoy it at

leisure. It reads rather quickly for old buffers like me; and

nobody ever seems to finish a sentence. But do you think you can

persuade our leading actors and actresses to dive from great

heights into a stage sea?”

“Oh, I dare say some of the old-stagers would be stuffy about it,”

she replied, “because—can’t fancy your great tragedienne, Olivia

Feversham—though she’s not so old really and just lovely still,

only—but so Shakespearian! But I’ve got the Honourable Violet

Varney to PROMISE, and her sister’s quite a friend of mine, though

of course not so—and lots of amateurs would do it for fun. That

Gahagan guy is a good swimmer, and he’s acted, too, and—oh, well,

he’d click if Joan Varney’s in it.”

The face of Mr. Pond, hitherto patient and stoical, became quite

silently alert and alive. He said with a new gravity:

“Captain Gahagan is a great friend of mine, and he has introduced

me to Miss Varney. As to her sister, the one on the stage—”

“Not a patch on Joan, is she? But—” said Miss Asa-Smith.

Mr. Pond had formed an impression. He liked Miss Asa-Smith. He

liked her very much. And the thought of the Honourable Violet

Varney, that English aristocrat, made him like the American even

more. The Honourable Violet was one of those wealthy women who pay

to act badly; and blackleg the poorer people who might have been

paid to act well. She certainly was quite capable of diving in a

bathing dress, or in anything or nothing, if it were the only way

to the stage and the spot-light. She was quite capable of helping

Miss Asa-Smith in her absurd play and talking similar nonsense

about being modern and independent of selfish man. But there was a

difference; and it was not to the advantage of the Honourable

Violet. Poor Artemis followed idiotic fashions because she was a

hard-working journalist who had to earn her living; and Violet

Varney only took away other people’s living. They both spoke in

the style that was a string of unfinished sentences. It was the

one language Mr. Pond thought that might truly be called broken

English. But Violet dropped the tail of a sentence as if she were

too tired to finish it; Artemis did so as if she were really too

eager to get on to the next. There was within her, somehow, a

thing, a spirit of life, which survives every criticism of America.

“Joan Varney’s much nicer,” continued Artemis, “and you bet your

friend Gahagan thinks so. Do you think they’ll really hitch up?

He’s a queer fellow, you know.”

Mr. Pond did not deny it. Captain Gahagan, that swaggering and

restless and sometimes sullen man-about-town, was queer in many

ways; and in none more than in his almost incongruous affection for

the precise and prosaic Mr. Pond.

“Some say he’s a rotter,” said the candid American. “I don’t say

that; but I do say he’s a dark horse. And he does shilly-shally

about Joan Varney, doesn’t he? Some say he’s really in love with

the great Olivia—your only tragic actress. Only she’s so jolly

tragic.”

“God send she doesn’t play in a real tragedy,” said Pond.

He knew what he meant; but he had not the faintest foreshadowing of

the awful tragedy of real life and death in which Olivia Feversham

was to play within the next twenty-four hours.

He was only thinking of his Irish friend as he knew him; and he was

near enough to know all that he did not know. Peter Patrick

Gahagan lived the modern life, perhaps to excess, was a prop of

nightclubs and a driver of sports cars, still comparatively young;

but, for all that, he was a survival. He belonged to the times of

a more Byronic pose. When Mr. W. B. Yeats wrote: “Romantic

Ireland’s dead and gone; it’s with O’Leary in the grave,” he had

never met Gahagan, who was not yet in the grave. He was of that

older tradition by a hundred tests; he had been a cavalry soldier

and also a member of Parliament; the last to follow the old Irish

orators with their rounded periods. Like all these, for some

reason, he adored Shakespeare. Isaac Butt filled speeches with

Shakespeare; Tim Healy could quote the poet so that his poetry

seemed part of the living talk at table; Russell of Killowen read

no other book. But he, like they, was Shakespearian in an

eighteenth-century way: the way of Garrick; and that eighteenth

century that he recalled had a pretty pagan side to it. Pond could

not dismiss the chances of Gahagan having an affair with Olivia or

anyone else; and if so a storm might be brewing. For Olivia was

married; and to no complaisant husband, either.

Frederick Feversham was something worse than an unsuccessful actor;

he was one who had been successful. He was now forgotten in the

theatre and remembered only in the law-courts. A dark and crabbed

man, still haggardly handsome, he had become famous, or familiar,

as a sort of permanent litigant. He was eternally bringing actions

against people whom he charged with trivial tricks and distant and

disputable wrongs: managers and rivals and the rest. He had as yet

no special quarrel with his wife, younger than himself and still

popular in the profession. But he was much less intimate with his

wife than with his solicitor.

Through court after court Feversham passed, pursuing his rights and

followed like a shadow by his solicitor, Luke, of the firm of

Masters, Luke and Masters; a young man with flat, yellow hair and a

rather wooden face. What he thought of his client’s feuds and how

far he ventured to restrain them, that wooden face would never

reveal. But he worked well for his client; and the two had

necessarily become in a way companions-in-arms. Of one thing Pond

was certain. Neither Feversham nor Luke was likely to spare

Gahagan, if that erratic gentleman put himself in the wrong. But

this part of the problem was destined to find a worse solution than

he dreamed of. Twenty-four hours after Pond’s talk with the

interviewer, he learned that Frederick Feversham was dead.

Like other litigious persons, Mr. Feversham had left a legal

problem behind him, to feed many lawyers with fees. But it was not

the problem of an ill-drawn will or a dubious signature. It was

the problem of a stiff and staring corpse, lying just inside a

garden-gate and nailed there by a fencing-sword with the button

broken off. Frederick Feversham, that legalist, had suffered at

least one final and indisputable illegality; he had been stabbed to

death as he entered his own home.

Long before certain facts, slowly collected, were put before the

police, they were put before Mr. Pond. This may seem odd, but

there were reasons; indeed Mr. Pond, like many other Government

officials, had rather secret and unsuspected spheres of influence;

his public powers were very private. Younger and more conspicuous

men had even been known to stand in a certain awe of him, owing to

special circumstances. But to explain all that is to explore the

labyrinth of the most unconstitutional of all constitutions. In

any case, his first warning of the trouble took the commonplace

form of an ordinary legal letter, with the heading of the well-

known firm of Masters, Luke and Masters, expressing the hope that

Mr. Luke might be allowed to discuss certain information with Mr.

Pond, before it was necessary for it to reach the police

authorities or the Press. Mr. Pond replied equally formally that

he would be delighted to receive Mr. Luke at a certain hour upon

the following day. Then he sat and stared into vacancy, with that

rather goggling expression which led some of his friends to compare

him to a fish.

He had already thought of about two-thirds of what the solicitor

was going to tell him.

“The truth is, Mr. Pond,” said the solicitor, in a confidential but

still careful voice, when he was at length deposited on the other

side of Mr. Pond’s table next day. “The truth is that the

possibilities of this affair, painful in any case, may be specially

painful for you. Most of us find it impossible to imagine that a

personal friend might come under suspicion in such matters.”

The mild eyes of Mr. Pond opened very wide, and even his mouth made

the momentary movement which some thought so very fishy. The

lawyer probably assumed that he was shocked at the first suggestion

of his friend being affected; in fact, he was mildly amazed to

suppose that anybody had not entertained the idea long ago. He

knew that words to that effect were common in the more conventional

detective stories, which he heartily enjoyed, as a change from

Burke and Gibbon. He could see the printed words on a hundred

pages: “None of us could believe that this handsome young

cricketer had committed a crime,” or: “It seemed absurd to connect

murder with a man like Captain Pickleboy, the most popular figure

in Society.” He had always wondered what the words meant. To his

simple and sceptical eighteenth-century mind, they seemed to mean

nothing at all. Why should not pleasant and fashionable men commit

murders, like anybody else? He was very much upset himself,

inside, about this particular case; but he still did not understand

that way of talking.

“I am sorry to say,” continued the lawyer in a low voice, “that

private investigation which we have already made, on our own

account, places your friend, Captain Gahagan, in a position

requiring explanation.”

“Yes,” thought Pond, “and, my God, Gahagan really does require

explanation! That’s exactly the difficulty about him—but, Lord,

how slow this fellow is!” In short, the real trouble was that Pond

was very fond of Captain Gahagan; but in so far as one could ask

whether men were capable of murder, he was rather inclined to think

that Gahagan WAS capable of murder—more capable of murder than of

meanness to a cabman.

Suddenly, with extraordinary vividness, the image of Gahagan

himself sprang up in Pond’s memory: Gahagan as he had last seen him

lounging with his large shoulders and long stride, and strange dark-

red hair under the rather rakishly tilted grey top-hat, and behind

him a space of sunset where the evening clouds passed in a sort of

crumbling purple pomp, rather like the pomp of poor Gahagan

himself. No; the Irishman was a man seventy-and-seven times to be

forgiven; but not a man to be lightly acquitted.

“Mr. Luke,” said Pond suddenly, “will it save time if I tell you,

to start with, what I know there is against Gahagan? He was

hanging round Mrs. Feversham, the great actress; I don’t know why

he was; my own belief is that he is really in love with another

woman. Yet he did unquestionably give the actress a huge amount of

his time: hours and hours and late hours too. But if Feversham

caught him doing anything unconventional, Feversham was not the man

to let him off without a lawsuit and a scandal and God knows what.

I don’t want to criticize your client; but, speaking crudely, he

almost lived on lawsuits and scandals all his life. And if

Feversham was the man to threaten or blackmail, I give it you

frankly that Gahagan was the man to hit him back in a bodily

fashion; and perhaps kill him, especially if a lady’s name were

involved. That is the case against Captain Gahagan; and I tell you

at the start that I don’t believe in it.”

“Unfortunately it is not the whole case against Captain Gahagan,”

replied Luke smoothly, “and I fear the full Statement may make even

you believe it. Perhaps the most serious result of our

investigations is this. It is now quite clearly established that

Captain Gahagan gave three quite contrary and inconsistent accounts

of his movements, or proposed movements, on the evening of the

murder. Allowing him the highest possible marks for truthfulness

in the matter, he must at least have told two lies to one truth.”

“I have always found Gahagan truthful enough,” replied Pond,

“except when he was telling lies for amusement; which is really

rather the mark of a man who doesn’t prostitute the sublime art of

lying to the base uses of necessity. About all ordinary practical

things, I have found him not only frank but also rather precise.”

“Even accepting what you say,” answered Mr. Luke dubiously, “we

should still have to answer: If he was commonly candid and

truthful, it must have been a mortal and desperate occasion that

made him lie.”

“To whom did he tell these lies?” asked Pond.

“That is where the whole matter is so painful and delicate,” said

the lawyer, shaking his head. “That afternoon, it seems, Gahagan

had been talking to several ladies.”

“He generally has,” said Pond. “Or was it they who were talking to

him? If one of them happened, for instance, to be that very

charming lady, Miss Asa-Smith of Pentapolis, I would venture to

guess that it was she who was talking to him.”

“This is rather extraordinary,” said Luke in some surprise. “I do

not know if it was a guess; but one of them certainly was a Miss

Asa-Smith of Pentapolis. The other two were the Hon. Violet Varney

and, last but not least, the Hon. Joan Varney. As a matter of

fact, it was the last that he spoke to first; which, I suppose, was

only natural. It is notable, on your own suggestion, that he is

really attached to this last lady, that his statement to her was

apparently much the nearest to the truth.”

“Ah,” said Mr. Pond, and pulled his beard thoughtfully.

“Joan Varney,” observed the lawyer gravely, “stated most

definitely, before she knew that there was any trouble or tragedy

in this case, that Captain Gahagan had left the house saying: ‘I

am going round to the Fevershams’.’”

“And you say that is contradicted by his statement to the others,”

said Mr. Pond.

“Most emphatically,” replied Luke. “The other sister, well known

on the stage as Violet Varney, stopped him as he was going out and

they exchanged a little light conversation. But, as he left, he

distinctly said to her: ‘I’m not going to the Fevershams’; they’re

still at Brighton,’ or something like that.”

“And now we come,” said Mr. Pond, smiling, “to my young friend from

Pentapolis. What was she doing there, by the way?”

“He found her on the doorstep when he opened the front door,”

replied Mr. Luke, also smiling. “She had arrived in a rush of

enthusiasm to interview Violet Varney as ‘Comedienne and Social

Leader.’ Neither she nor Gahagan are the sort of people not to be

noticed; or to fail to notice each other. So Gahagan had a little

talk with her, too; at the end of which he departed, with a

flourish of his grey top-hat, telling her that he was going

immediately to the club.”

“Are you certain of that?” asked Pond, frowning.

“She was certain of it; because she was in a red-hot rage about

it,” replied Luke. “It seems that she has some feminist fad on the

subject. She thinks all male persons who go to clubs go there to

tell slanderous anecdotes about women and then drink themselves

under the table. She may have had a little professional feeling

about it too; perhaps she would have liked to have a longer

interview, either for herself or The Live Wire. But I’ll swear

she’s quite honest.”

“Oh, yes,” said Mr. Pond emphatically but rather gloomily, “she’s

absolutely honest.”

“Well, there it is,” said Luke, speaking also not without a decent

gloom. “It seems to me that the psychology’s only too obvious

under the circumstances. He blurted out where he was really going

to the girl he was accustomed to confide in; perhaps he didn’t

really plan the crime till later; or perhaps it wasn’t entirely

planned or premeditated. But by the time he talked to less

friendly people he saw how unwise it would be to say he was going

to the Fevershams’. His first impulse is to say, hastily and too

crudely, that he was NOT going to the Fevershams’. Then, by the

third interview, he thinks of a really good lie, normal and

sufficiently vague, and says he is going to the club.”

“It might be like that,” replied Pond, “or it might—” And Mr.

Pond fell for the first time into the lax habit of Miss Asa-Smith,

and failed to finish his sentence. Instead he sat staring at the

distance with his rather goggle-eyed and fish-like gaze; then he

put his head on his hands, said apologetically: “Please pardon me

if I think for a minute,” and buried his bald brows once more.

The bearded fish came to the surface again with a somewhat new

expression, and said with a brisk and almost sharp tone:

“You seem very much bent on bringing the crime home to poor

Gahagan.”

For the first time Luke’s features stiffened to hardness, or even

harshness. “We naturally wish to bring the murderer of our client

to justice.”

Pond bent forward and his eyes were penetrating as he repeated:

“But you will have it that the murderer was Gahagan.”

“I’ve given you the evidence,” said Luke, lowering; “you know the

witnesses.”

“And yet, oddly enough,” said Pond very slowly, “you haven’t

mentioned the really damning thing against him in the report of

those witnesses.”

“It’s damning enough—what do you mean?” snapped the lawyer.

“I mean the fact that they are UNWILLING witnesses,” replied Pond.

“It couldn’t be a conspiracy. My little Yank is as honest as the

day and would never join a conspiracy. He’s the sort of man women

like. Even Violet Varney likes him. Joan Varney loves him. And

yet they all give evidence to contradict him or, at least, show he

contradicted himself. And yet they’re all wrong.”

“What the devil do you mean,” cried Luke with sudden impatience,

“by saying they’re all wrong?”

“They’re all wrong about what he said,” answered Pond. “Did you

ask them if he said anything else?”

“What else is needed?” cried the lawyer, now really angry. “They

could all swear he said what I say. Going to the Fevershams’; not

going to the Fevershams’; going to some unnamed club—and then

bolting down the street so as to leave a lady in a rage.”

“Precisely,” said Pond. “You say he said three different things.

I say he said the same thing to all three. He turned it the other

way round and made it the same.”

“He turned it the other way round all right,” retorted Luke almost

viciously. “But if he goes into the witness-box, he’ll find out

whether the law of perjury says that turning a thing round makes it

the same.”

There was a pause and then Mr. Pond said serenely:

“So now we know all about the Crime of Captain Gahagan.”

“Who says we know all about anything? I don’t. Do you?”

“Yes,” said Mr. Pond. “The Crime of Captain Gahagan was that he

didn’t understand women; especially modern women. These men with a

vague air of being lady-killers seldom do. Don’t you know that

dear old Gahagan is really your great-great-grandfather?”

Mr. Luke made a movement as of sudden and sincere alarm; he was not

the first man to fancy for a moment that Mr. Pond was mad.

“Can’t you see,” went on Pond, “that he belongs to the school of

the old bucks and beaux who called her ‘Woman, Lovely Woman,’ and

knew nothing whatever about her—to the considerable increase of

her power? But how they could pay compliments! ‘Stand close

about, you Stygian set… .’ But perhaps, as you seem to

suggest, it is not quite relevant. But you see what I mean by

Gahagan being the old sort of lady-killer?”

“I know he’s a very old sort of gentleman-killer,” cried Luke quite

violently, “and that he killed the worthy and greatly wronged

gentleman who was my client and friend!”

“You seem a little annoyed,” said Mr. Pond. “Have you tried

reading Dr. Johnson’s Vanity of Human Wishes? Very soothing.

Believe me, those eighteenth-century writers I wanted to quote are

very soothing. Have you read Addison’s play about Cato?”

“You appear to be mad,” said the lawyer, now positively pale.

“Or again,” continued Mr. Pond in a chatty way, “have you read Miss

Asa-Smith’s play about the duchess in the bathing-suit? All the

sentences curiously cut short—like the bathing-suit.”

“Do you mean anything whatever?” asked the lawyer in a low voice.

“Oh, yes, I mean a great deal,” replied Pond. “But it takes quite

a long time to explain—like the Vanity of Human Wishes. What I

mean is this. My friend Gahagan is very fond of those old wits and

orators, just as I am; speeches where you have to wait for the

peroration; epigrams with the sting in the tail. That’s how we

first became friends, by both being fond of the eighteenth-century

style; balance and antithesis and all that. Now if you have this

habit and read, say, the hackneyed lines in Cato: ”Tis not in

mortals to command success; but we’ll do more, Sempronius, we’ll

deserve it’—well, it may be good or bad; but you’ve got to wait

for the end of the sentence; because it begins with a platitude and

ends with a point. But the modern sort of sentence never ends; and

nobody waits for it to end.

“Now women were always a little like that. It isn’t that they

don’t think, they think quicker than we do. They often talk

better. But they don’t LISTEN so well. They leap so quickly upon

the first point; they see so much more in it; and go off in a

gallop of inference about it—so that they sometimes don’t notice

the rest of the speech at all. But Gahagan, being of the other

sort, the old oratorical sort, would always end his sentence

properly, and be as careful to say what he meant at the end as the

beginning.

“I suggest to you, as the barristers say, that what Captain Gahagan

really said to Joan in the first case was this: ‘I’m going round

to the Fevershams’; I don’t believe they are back from Brighton

yet, but I’ll just look in and see. If they’re not. I’ll go on to

the club.’ That is what Peter Gahagan said; but that is not what

Joan Varney heard. She heard about going to the Fevershams’ and

felt at once that she knew all about it—far too much about it—to

the not unnatural tune of ‘He’s going to see that woman’; even

though his next words were that the woman almost certainly wasn’t

there. Stuff about Brighton and the club didn’t interest her, and

she didn’t even remember it. Very well, let us go on to the next

case. What Gahagan said to Violet Varney was this: ‘It’s no good

going to the Fevershams’ really; they’re not back from Brighton;

but perhaps I’ll look in and see; if they’re not back, I shall go

on to the club.’ Violet is much less truthful and careful than

Joan; and she was jealous of Olivia herself, but in a much

shallower way, Violet supposing herself to be an actress. She also

heard the word Feversham and remembered vaguely that he said it was

no good going there; that is, that he was not going there. She was

pleased at this and condescended to chat with him; but did not

condescend to pay any attention whatever to anything else he said.

“Now for the third case. What Gahagan said to Miss Artemis Asa-

Smith on the doorstep was this: ‘I’m going to the club; I promised

to look in on some friends of mine on the way, the Fevershams; but

I don’t believe they’re back from Brighton.’ That’s what he said.

What Artemis heard, saw and blasted with her blazing eye, was a

typical insolent, selfish, self-indulgent male brazenly bragging in

the open street of his intention to go to his infamous club, where

women are slandered and men drugged with alcohol. After the shock

of this shameless avowal, of course she could not stoop to pick up

the pieces of any other silly things he had said. He was simply

the man who went to the club.

“Now all those three real statements of Gahagan are exactly the

same. They all mean the same thing; map out the same course of

action; give the same reasons for the same acts. But they sound

totally different according to which sentence comes first;

especially to these rather jumpy modern girls, accustomed only to

jump at the sentence that comes first—very often because there

isn’t any thing at all to come after it. The Asa-Smith school of

drama, in which every sentence stops as soon as it starts, if it

doesn’t strike you as having much to do with the Tragedy of Cato,

has had a very great deal to do with the Tragedy of Captain

Gahagan. They might have hanged my friend between them, with the

best intentions in the world, simply and solely because they will

think only in half-sentences. Broken necks, broken hearts, broken

lives, and all because they won’t learn any language but broken

English. Don’t you think there’s something to be said for that

musty old taste of his and mine, for the sort of literature that

makes you read all that a man writes and listen to all that he

says? Wouldn’t you rather have an important statement made to you

in the language of Addison or Johnson than in the splutterings of

Mr. Toxin and the Diving Duchess?”

During this monologue, certainly rather long, the lawyer had grown

more and more restless and full of nervous irritation.

“This is all fancywork,” he said almost feverishly. “You haven’t

proved any of this.”

“No,” said Pond gravely, “as you say, I fancied it. At least I

guessed it. But I did ring up Gahagan and hear something of the

truth of his words and movements that afternoon.”

“Truth!” cried Luke, with very extraordinary bitterness.

Pond looked at him curiously. That woodenness of visage which was

the first impression produced by Mr. Luke was found on examination

to consist mostly of a rather forced look of fixity, combined with

the rigid smoothness of his head and hair, the latter looking as if

it had been painted on with some rather sticky yellow paint: a

gummy gamboge. His eyelids indeed were cold and often partially

closed; but inside them the grey-green eyes seemed strangely small,

as if they were distant; and they were dancing and darting about

like microscopic green flies. The more Mr. Pond looked at those

veiled but restless eyes, the less he liked them. The old fancy

came back to him about an actual conspiracy against Gahagan; though

certainly not one worked by Artemis or Joan. At last he broke the

silence very abruptly.

“Mr. Luke,” he said, “you are naturally concerned for your late

client; but some might feel you had a more than professional

interest. Since you study his interests so deeply, can you give me

a piece of information about him? DID Mr. Feversham and his wife

come back from Brighton that day? Was Mrs. Feversham at the house

that afternoon, whether Gahagan went there, or not?”

“She was not,” said Luke shortly. “They were both expected to

return next morning. I have no idea why Feversham himself did

return that night.”

“Looks almost as if somebody had sent for him,” said Mr. Pond.

Mr. Luke the solicitor rose abruptly from his seat and turned away.

“I cannot see any use in all these speculations of yours,” he said,

and, making a stiff salute, he took his top-hat and was gone from

the house with a swiftness that seemed hardly normal.

Next day Mr. Pond clad himself even more conventionally and

carefully than usual, and proceeded to pay a round of calls on a

series of ladies: a frivolous solemnity which with him was by no

means usual. The first lady he waited upon was the Hon. Violet

Varney, whom he had hitherto only seen in the distance, and was

gently depressed at having to see so close. She was what he

believed, in these latter days, to be described as a platinum

blonde. It was doubtless a graceful reminiscence of her own name

which led her to tint her mouth and cheeks with a colour that was

rather violet than purple, giving an effect which her friends

called ghostly and her foes ghastly. Even from this listless

lady he did extract some admissions lending to help in the

reconstruction of Gahagan’s real remarks; though the lady’s own

remarks had their usual air of expiring with a gasp before they

were really finished. Then he had another interview with her

sister, Joan, and marvelled inwardly at the strange thing which is

human personality and stands apart from modes and manners. For

Joan had very much the same tricks of style; the same rather high,

well-bred voice, the same sketchy, uncompleted sentences; but,

fortunately, not the same purple powder and not in the least the

same eyes or gestures or mind or immortal soul. Mr. Pond, with all

his old-fashioned prejudices, knew at once that in this other girl

the new virtues were virtues, whether or not they were new. She

really was brave and generous and fond of the truth, though the

Society papers did say so. “She’s all right,” said Mr. Pond to

himself. “She’s as good as gold. A great deal better than gold.

And oh, how much better than platinum!”

Stopping at the next stage of his pilgrimage, he visited the

monstrous and ludicrous large hotel which had the honour of housing

Miss Artemis Asa-Smith of Pennsylvania. She received him with the

rather overwhelming enthusiasm which bore her everywhere through

the world; and Mr. Pond had very little difficulty in her case in

extracting an admission that even a man who goes to a club may

happen not to be a murderer. Though this explanation was naturally

less personal and intimate than his interview with Joan (about

which he always refused to say a word to anybody), the ardent

Artemis continued to earn his approval by her reserves of good

sense and good nature. She saw the point about the order of the

topics mentioned, and its probable effect on her own mind; and so

far the diplomacy of Mr. Pond had been successful. All the three

ladies, with whatever degrees of seriousness or concentration, had

listened to his theory of what Gahagan had said; and had all agreed

that he might very probably have said it. This part of his task

being done, Mr. Pond paused a little, and perhaps rather pulled

himself together, before approaching his last duty—which also took

the form of calling on a lady. He might be excused; for it also

involved passing through that grim garden where a man had lain

murdered, to that high and sinister house where his widow was still

living alone: the great Olivia, queen of tragedy, now tragic by a

double claim.

He stepped, not without repugnance, across that dark corner inside

the gate and under the holly tree where poor Fred Feversham had

been spiked to the earth by a mere splinter of a sword; and as he

climbed the crooked path to the doorway in the narrow and bare

brick house that stood above him like a tower, dark against the

stars, he revolved difficulties much deeper than had yet troubled

him in the more trifling matter of the supposed inconsistencies of

Gahagan’s conversation. There was a real question behind all that

nonsense; and it demanded an answer. Somebody had murdered the

unfortunate Frederick Feversham; and there were some real reasons

for directing the suspicion upon Gahagan. After all, he had been

in the habit of spending whole days, or half of the nights as well,

with this actress; nothing seemed more horribly natural, more

repulsively probable, than that they had been surprised by

Feversham and had taken the bloody way out. Mrs. Feversham had

often been compared to Mrs. Siddons. Her own external behaviour

had always been full of dignity and discretion. A scandal for her

was not an advertisement, as it would be for Violet Varney. She

had really the stronger motive of the two … but, good God, this

would never do! Suppose Gahagan really was innocent—but at that

price! Whatever his weaknesses, he was just the man to be hanged

like a gentleman rather than let The Lady—He looked up with

growing terror at the tower of dark brick, wondering if he were to

meet the murderess… . Then he furiously flung off the

morbidity, and tried again to fix himself on the facts. After all,

what was there against Gahagan or the widow? It seemed to him, as

he forced himself to colder considerations, that it really resolved

itself into a matter of time.

Gahagan had certainly spent a huge amount of TIME with Olivia; that

was really the only external proof of his passion for her. The

proofs of his passion for Joan were very external indeed. Pond

could have sworn that the Irishman was really in love with Joan.

He threw himself at her head; and she, on the accepted standards of

modern youth, threw herself back at him. But these encounters, one

might say collisions, were as brief as they were brilliant. Why

did a lover full of such triumphs want to go off and spend such a

lot of TIME with a much older woman? … These broodings had

turned him into an automaton and brought him unconsciously past the

servants and up the stairs and into the very room where he was

asked to wait for Mrs. Feversham. He nervously picked up an old

battered book, apparently dating from the time when the actress was

a schoolgirl, for the flyleaf showed in a very schoolgirl hand:

“Olivia Malone.” Perhaps the great Shakespearian actress claimed

descent from the great Shakespearian critic. But, anyhow, she must

be Irish—at least by tradition… .

As he bent over the shabby book in the dusky anteroom, there shot

into his mind a white ray of serene and complete understanding: so

far as this tale goes, the last of the paradoxes of Mr. Pond. He

felt full and complete certainty; and yet the only words to express

it wrote themselves rapidly across his brain with the bewildering

brevity of a hieroglyphic.

“Love never needs time. But Friendship always needs time. More

and more and more time, up to long past midnight.”

When Gahagan had done those crazy things that blazoned his devotion

to Joan Varney, they had hardly occupied any time. When he fell on

her from a parachute as she came out of church at Bournemouth, the

fall was naturally very rapid. When he tore up a return ticket

costing hundreds of pounds to stay with her half an hour longer in

Samoa, it was only half an hour longer. When he swam the

Hellespont in imitation of Leander, it was only for exactly thirty-

five minutes’ conversation with Hero. But Love is like that. It

is a thing of great moments; and it lives on the memory of moments.

Perhaps it is a fragile illusion; perhaps, on the other hand, it is

eternal and beyond time. But Friendship eats up time. If poor

Gahagan had a real intellectual friendship, then he would go on

talking till long past midnight. And with whom would Gahagan be so

likely to have one as with an Irish actress who was chiefly

interested in Shakespeare? Even as he had the thought, he heard

the rich and faintly Irish voice of Olivia welcoming him; and he

knew he was right.

“Don’t you know,” asked the widow with a mournful smile, when he

had tactfully steered the conversation past condolences to Captain

Gahagan, “don’t you know we poor Irishes have a secret vice? It’s

called Poetry; or perhaps I ought to say it’s generally called

Recitation. It’s been suppressed by the police in all the English

salons; and that’s the worst of the Irish wrongs. People in London

are not allowed to recite poems to each other all night, as they do

in Dublin. Poor Peter used to come to me and talk Shakespeare till

morning; but I had to turn him out at last. When a man calls on

ME, and tries to recite the whole of Romeo and Juliet, it gets past

a joke. But you see how it was. The English won’t allow the poor

fellow to recite Shakespeare.”

Mr. Pond did indeed see how it was. He knew enough about men to

know that a man must have a friend, if possible a female friend, to

talk to till all is blue. He knew enough about Dubliners to know

that neither devils nor dynamite will stop them from reciting

verse. All the black clouds of morbid brooding on the murder which

had oppressed him in the garden had rolled away at the first sound

of this strong, good-humoured irishwoman’s voice. But after a

little while they began to gather again, though more remotely.

After all, as he had said before, SOMEBODY had killed poor Fred

Feversham.

He was quite certain now that it was not Feversham’s wife. He was

practically certain it was not Gahagan. He went home that night

turning the question over and over; but he had only one night’s

unrest. For the next day’s paper contained the news of the

unexplained suicide of Mr. Luke, of the well-known firm of Masters,

Luke and Masters; and Mr. Pond sat gently chiding himself, because

he had not thought of the obvious fact that a man who is always

tearing and rending people because he has been swindled, may

possibly discover one day that he has been swindled by his own

solicitor. Feversham had summoned Luke to that midnight meeting in

the garden, in order to tell him so; but Mr. Luke, a man careful of

his professional standing, had taken very prompt steps to prevent

Mr. Feversham telling anybody else.

“It makes me feel very bad,” said Mr. Pond, meekly and almost

tremulously. “At that last meeting of ours I could see he was

awfully frightened already; and, do you know, I’m very much afraid

that it was I who frightened him.”

WHEN DOCTORS AGREE

Mr. Ponds paradoxes were of a very peculiar kind. They were indeed

paradoxical defiances even of the law of paradox. Paradox has been

defined as “Truth standing on her head to attract attention.”

Paradox has been defended; on the ground that so many fashionable

fallacies still stand firmly on their feet, because they have no

heads to stand on. But it must be admitted that writers, like

other mendicants and mountebanks, frequently do try to attract

attention. They set out conspicuously, in a single line in a play,

or at the head or tail of a paragraph, remarks of this challenging

kind; as when Mr. Bernard Shaw wrote: “The Golden Rule is that

there is no Golden Rule”; or Oscar Wilde observed: “I can resist

everything except temptation”; or a duller scribe (not to be named

with these and now doing penance for his earlier vices in the

nobler toil of celebrating the virtues of Mr. Pond) said in defence

of hobbies and amateurs and general duffers like himself: “If a

thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.” To these things do

writers sink; and then the critics tell them that they “talk for

effect”; and then the writers answer: “What the devil else should

we talk for? Ineffectualness?” It is a sordid scene.

But Mr. Pond belonged to a more polite world and his paradoxes were

quite different. It was quite impossible to imagine Mr. Pond

standing on his head. But it was quite as easy to imagine him

standing on his head as to imagine him trying to attract attention.

He was the quietest man in the world to be a man of the world; he

was a small, neat Civil Servant; with nothing notable about him

except a beard that looked not only old-fashioned but vaguely

foreign, and perhaps a little French, though he was as English as

any man alive. But, for that matter, French respectability is far

more respectable than English; and Mr. Pond, though in some ways

cosmopolitan, was completely respectable. Another thing that was

faintly French about him was the level ripple of his speech: a

tripping monotone that never tripped over a single vowel. For the

French carry their sense of equality even to the equality of

syllables. With this equable flow, full of genteel gossip on

Vienna, he was once entertaining a lady; and five minutes later she

rejoined her friends with a very white face; and whispered to them

the shocking secret that the mild little man was mad.

The peculiarity of his conversation was this: in the middle of a

steady stream of sense, there would suddenly appear two or three

words which seemed simply to be nonsense. It was as if something

had suddenly gone wrong with the works of a gramophone. It was

nonsense which the speaker never seemed to notice himself; so that

sometimes his hearers also hardly noticed that speech so natural

was nonsensical. But to those who did notice, he seemed to be

saying something like, “Naturally, having no legs, he won the

walking-race easily,” or “As there was nothing to drink, they all

got tipsy at once.” Broadly speaking, two kinds of people stopped

him with stares or questions: the very stupid and the very clever.

The stupid because the absurdity alone stuck out from a level of

intelligence that baffled them; it was indeed in itself an example

of the truth in paradox. The only part of his conversation they

could understand was the part they could not understand. And the

clever stopped him because they knew that, behind each of these

queer compact contradictions, there was a very queer story—like

the queer story to be narrated here.

His friend Gahagan, that ginger-haired giant and somewhat flippant

Irish dandy, declared that Pond put in these senseless phrases

merely to find out whether his listeners were listening. Pond

never said so; and his motive remained rather a mystery. But

Gahagan declared that there is a whole tribe of modern intellectual

ladies, who have learned nothing except the art of turning on a

talker a face of ardour and attention, while their minds are so

very absent that some little phrase like, “Finding himself in

India, he naturally visited Toronto,” will pass harmlessly in at

one ear and out at the other, without disturbing the cultured mind

within.

It was at a little dinner given by old Wotton to Gahagan and Pond

and others, that we first got a glimpse of the real meaning of

these wild parentheses of so tame a talker. The truth was, to

begin with, that Mr. Pond, in spite of his French beard, was very

English in his habit of assuming that he ought to be a little dull,

in deference to other people. He disliked telling long and largely

fantastic stories about himself, such as his friend Gahagan told,

though Pond thoroughly enjoyed them when Gahagan told them. Pond

himself had had some very curious experiences; but, as he would not

turn them into long stories, they appeared only as short stories;

and the short stories were so very short as to be quite

unintelligible. In trying to explain the eccentricity, it is best

to begin with the simplest example, like a diagram in a primer of

logic. And I will begin with the short story, which was concealed

in the shorter phrase, which puzzled poor old Wotton so completely

on that particular evening. Wotton was an old-fashioned

diplomatist, of the sort that seemed to grow more national by

trying to be international. Though far from militarist, he was

very military. He kept the peace by staccato sentences under a

stiff grey moustache. He had more chin than forehead.

“They tell me,” Wotton was saying, “that the Poles and Lithuanians

have come to an agreement about Wilno. It was an old row, of

course; and I expect it was six to one and half a dozen to the

other.”

“You are a real Englishman, Wotton,” said Gahagan, “and you say in

your heart, ‘All these foreigners are alike.’ You’re right enough

if you mean that we’re all unlike you. The English are the

lunatics of the earth, who know that everybody else is mad. But we

do sometimes differ a little from each other, you know. Even we in

Ireland have been known to differ from each other. But you see the

Pope denouncing the Bolshevists, or the French Revolution rending

the Holy Roman Empire, and you still say in your hearts, ‘What can

the difference be betwixt Tweedledum and Tweedledee?’”

“There was no difference,” said Pond, “between Tweedledum and

Tweedledee. You will remember that it is distinctly recorded that

they agreed. But remember what they agreed about.”

Wotton looked a little baffled and finally grunted: “Well, if

these fellows have agreed, I suppose there will be a little peace.”

“Funny things, agreements,” said Pond. “Fortunately people

generally go on disagreeing, till they die peacefully in their

beds. Men very seldom do fully and finally agree. I did know two

men who came to agree so completely that one of them naturally

murdered the other; but as a rule …”

“‘Agreed so completely,’” said Wotton thoughtfully. “Don’t you—

are you quite sure you don’t mean: ‘Disagreed so completely’?”

Gahagan uttered a sort of low whoop of laughter. “Oh, no,” he

said, “he doesn’t mean that. I don’t know what the devil he does

mean; but he doesn’t mean anything so sensible as that.”

But Wotton, in his ponderous way, still attempted to pin down the

narrator to a more responsible statement; and the upshot of it was

that Mr. Pond was reluctantly induced to explain what he really

meant and let us hear the whole story.

The mystery was involved at first in another mystery: the strange

murder of Mr. James Haggis, of Glasgow, which filled the Scottish

and English newspapers not many years ago. On the face of it, the

thing was a curious story; to introduce a yet more curious sequel.

Haggis had been a prominent and wealthy citizen, a bailie of the

city and an elder of the kirk. Nobody denied that even in these

capacities he had sometimes been rather unpopular; but, to do him

justice, he had often been unpopular through his loyalty to

unpopular causes. He was the sort of old Radical who is more rigid

and antiquated than any Tory; and, maintaining in theory the cause

of Retrenchment and Reform, he managed to suggest that almost any

Reform was too expensive for the needs of Retrenchment. Thus he

had stood alone in opposition to the universal support given to old

Dr. Campbell’s admirable campaign for fighting the epidemic in the

slums during the slump. But to deduce from his economics that he

was a demon delighting in the sight of poor children dying of

typhoid was perhaps an exaggerated inference. Similarly, he was

prominent in the Presbyterian councils as refusing all modern

compromise with the logic of Calvinism; but to infer that he

actually hoped all his neighbours were damned before they were born

is too personal an interpretation of theological theory.

On the other side, he was admittedly honest in business and

faithful to his wife and family; so that there was a general

reaction in favour of his memory when he was found stabbed to the

heart in the meagre grass of the grim little churchyard that

adjoined his favourite place of worship. It was impossible to

imagine Mr. Haggis as involved in any romantic Highland feud

calling for the dirk, or any romantic assignation interrupted with

the stiletto; and it was generally fell that to be knifed and left

unburied among the buried dead was an exaggerated penalty for being

a rather narrow Scottish merchant of the old school.

It happened that Mr. Pond himself had been present at a little

party where there was high debate about the murder as a mystery.

His host, Lord Glenorchy, had a hobby of reading books on

criminology; his hostess, Lady Glenorchy, had the less harmful

hobby of reading those much more solid and scientific books which

are called detective stories. There were present, as the society

papers say, Major MacNabb, the Chief Constable, and Mr. Lancelot

Browne, a brilliant London barrister who found it much more of a

bore to be a lawyer than to pretend to be a detective; also, among

those present, was the venerable and venerated Dr. Campbell, whose

work among the poor has already been inadequately commended, and a

young friend of his named Angus, whom he was understood to be

coaching and instructing generally for his medical examinations and

his scientific career.

Responsible people naturally love to be irresponsible. All these

persons delighted to throw theories about in private which they

need not answer for in public. The barrister, being a humane man,

was delighted to prosecute somebody whom he would not have to hang.

The criminologist was enchanted to analyse the lunacy of somebody

he could never have proved to be a lunatic. And Lady Glenorchy was

charmed at the chance of considering poor Mr. Haggis (of all

people) as the principal character in a shocker. Hilarious

attempts were made to fix the crime on the United Presbyterian

minister, a notorious Sublapsarian, naturally, nay inevitably,

impelled to stick a dirk in a Supralapsarian. Lord Glenorchy was

more serious, not to say monotonous. Having learnt from his books

of criminology the one great discovery of that science, that mental

and moral deformity are found only among poor people, he suspected

a plot of local Communists (all with the wrong-shaped thumb and

ear) and picked for his fancy a Socialist agitator of the city.

Mr. Angus made bold to differ; his choice was an old lag, or

professional criminal, known to be in the place, who had been

almost everything that is alarming except a Socialist agitator.

Then it was that the point was referred, not without a certain

reverence, to the white-haired and wise old physician, who had now

behind him a whole lifetime of charity and good works. One of the

many ways in which Dr. Campbell seemed to have emerged from an

elder and perhaps honester world was the fact that he not only

spoke with a Scottish accent but he spoke Scottish. His speech

will, therefore, be rendered here with difficulty and in doubt and

trembling.

“Weel, ye will a’ be asking wha dirked Jamie Haggis? And I’ll tell

ye fair at the start that I winna gie a bawbee to ken wha dirked

Jamie Haggis. Gin I kent, I wadna’ say. It’s a sair thing, na

doot, that the freens and benefactors o’ puir humanity should no be

named and fitly celebrated; but like the masons that built our

gran’ cathedral and the gran’ poets that wrote our ballads of

Otterburn and Sir Patrick Spens, the man that achieved the virtuous

act o’ killing Jamie Haggis will ha’e nae pairsonal credit for’t in

this world; it is even possible he might be a wee bit inconvenienced.

So ye’ll get nae guesses out of me; beyond saying I’ve lang been

seekin’ a man of sic prudence and public spirit.”

There followed that sort of silence in which people are not certain

whether to laugh, at a deliberate stroke of wit; but before they

could do so, young Angus, who kept his eyes fixed on his venerable

preceptor, had spoken with the eagerness of the ardent student.

“But you’ll not say, Dr. Campbell, that murder is right because

some acts or opinions of the murdered man are wrong?”

“Aye, if they’re wrang enough,” replied the benevolent Dr. Campbell

blandly. “After all, we’ve nae ither test o’ richt and wrang.

Salus populi suprema lex.”

“Aren’t the Ten Commandments a bit of a test?” asked the young man,

with a rather heated countenance, emphasized by his red hair, that

stood up on his head like stiff flames.

The silver-haired saint of sociology continued to regard him with a

wholly benevolent smile; but there was an odd gleam in his eye as

he answered:

“Aye, the Ten Commandments are a test. What we doctors are

beginning to ca’ an Intelligence Test.”

Whether it was an accident, or whether the intuitions of Lady

Glenorchy were a little alarmed by the seriousness of the subject,

it was at this point that she struck in.

“Well, if Dr. Campbell won’t pronounce for us, I suppose we must

all stick to our own suspicions. I don’t know whether you like

cigarettes in the middle of dinner; it’s a fashion I can’t get used

to myself.”

At this point in his narrative, Mr. Pond threw himself back in his

chair with a more impatient movement than he commonly permitted

himself.

“Of course, they will do it,” he said, with a mild explosiveness.

“They’re admired and thought very tactful when they do it.”

“When who do what?” said Wotton. “What on earth are you talking

about now?”

“I’m talking about hostesses,” said Pond, with an air of pain.

“Good hostesses. Really successful hostesses. They will cut into

conversation, on the theory that it can be broken off anywhere.

Just as it’s quite the definition of a good hostess to make two

people talk when they hate it, and part them when they are

beginning to like it. But they sometimes do the most deadly and

awful damage. You see, they stop conversations that are not worth

starting again. And that’s horrible, like murder.”

“But if the conversation’s not worth starting again, why is it

horrible to stop it?” asked the conscientious Wotton, still

laboriously in pursuit.

“Why, THAT’S why it’s horrible to stop it,” answered Pond, almost

snappishly for so polite a person. “Talk ought to be sacred

because it is so light, so tenuous, so trivial, if you will;

anyhow, so frail and easy to destroy. Cutting short its life is

worse than murder; it’s infanticide. It’s like killing a baby

that’s trying to come to life. It can never be restored to life,

though one rose from the dead. A good light conversation can never

be put together again when it’s broken to pieces; because you can’t

get all the pieces. I remember a splendid talk at Trefusis’s

place, that began because there was a crack of thunder over the

house and a cat howled in the garden, and somebody made a rather

crude joke about a catastrophe. And then Gahagan here had a

perfectly lovely theory that sprang straight out of cats and

catastrophes and everything, and would have started a splendid talk

about a political question on the Continent.”

“The Catalonian question, I suppose,” said Gahagan, laughing, “but

I fear I’ve quite forgotten my lovely theory.”

“That’s just what I say,” said Pond, gloomily. “It could only have

been started then; it ought to have been sacred because it wasn’t

worth starting again. The hostess swept it all out of our heads,

and then had the cheek to say afterwards that we could talk about

it some other time. Could we? Could we make a contract with a

cloud to break just over the roof, and tie a cat up in the garden

and pull its tail at the right moment, and give Gahagan just enough

champagne to inspire him with a theory so silly that he’s forgotten

it already? It was then or never with that debate being started;

and yet bad results enough followed from it being stopped. But

that, as they say, is another story.”

“You must tell it to us another time,” said Gahagan. “At present I

am still curious about the man who murdered another man because he

agreed with him.”

“Yes,” assented Wotton, “we’ve rather strayed from the subject,

haven’t we?”

“So Mrs. Trefusis said,” murmured Mr. Pond sadly. “I suppose we

can’t all feel the sanctity of really futile conversation. But if

you’re really interested in the other matter, I don’t mind telling

you all about it; though I’d rather not tell you exactly how I came

to know all about it. That was rather a confidential matter—what

they call a confession. Pardon my little interlude on the tactful

hostess; it had something to do with what followed and I have a

reason for mentioning it.

“Lady Glenorchy quite calmly changed the subject from murder to

cigarettes; and everybody’s first feeling was that we had been done

out of a very entertaining little tiff about the Ten Commandments.

A mere trifle, too light and airy to recur to our minds at any

other time. But there was another trifle that did recur to my own

mind afterwards; and kept my attention on a murder of which I might

have thought little enough at the time, as De Quincey says. I

remembered once looking up Glenorchy in Who’s Who, and seeing that

he had married the daughter of a very wealthy squire near Lowestoft

in Suffolk.”

“Lowestoft, Suffolk. These are dark hints,” said Gahagan. “Do

these in themselves point to some awful and suspicious fact?”

“They point,” said Pond, “to the awful fact that Lady Glenorchy is

not Scottish. If she had introduced the cigarettes at her father’s

dinner-table in Suffolk, such trifles as the Ten Commandments would

instantly have been tossed away from everyone’s mind and memory.

But I knew I was in Scotland and that the story had only just

begun. I have told you that old Campbell was tutoring or coaching

young Angus for his medical degree. It was a great honour for a

lad like Angus to have Campbell for a coach; but it must have been

quite agreeable even to an authority like Campbell to have Angus

for a pupil. For he had always been a most industrious and

ambitious and intelligent pupil, and one likely to do the old man

credit; and after the time I speak of, he seemed to grow more

industrious and ambitious than ever. In fact, he shut himself up

so exclusively with his coach that he failed in his examination.

That was what first convinced me that my guess was right.”

“And very lucid, too,” said Gahagan with a grin. “He worked so

hard with his coach that he failed in his examination. Another

statement that might seem to some to require expansion.”

“It’s very simple, really,” said Mr. Pond innocently. “But in

order to expand it, we must go back for a moment to the mystery of

Mr. Haggis’s murder. It had already spread a sort of detective

fever in the neighbourhood; for all the Scots love arguing and it

really was rather a fascinating riddle. One great point in the

mystery was the wound, which seemed at first to have been made by a

dirk or dagger of some kind but was afterwards found by the experts

to demand a different instrument of rather peculiar shape.

Moreover, the district had been combed for knives and daggers; and

temporary suspicion fixed on any wild youths from beyond the

Highland line, who might retain an historic tenderness for the

possession of dirks. All the medical authorities agreed that the

instrument had been something more subtle than a dirk, though no

medical authorities would consent even to guess what it was.

People were perpetually ransacking the churchyard and the church in

search of clues. And just about this time young Angus, who had

been a strict supporter of this particular church, and had even

once induced his old tutor and friend to sit under its minister for

one evening service, suddenly left off going there; indeed, he left

off going to any church at all. So I realized that I was still on

the right track.”

“Oh,” said Wotton blankly, “so you realized that you were still on

the right track.”

“I fear I did not realize that you were on any track,” said

Gahagan. “To speak with candour, my dear Pond, I should say that

of all the trackless and aimless and rambling human statements I

have ever heard, the most rambling was the narrative we have just

been privileged to hear from you. First you tell us that two

Scotsmen began a conversation about the morality of murder and

never finished it; then you go off on a tirade against society

hostesses; then you reveal the horrid fact that one of them came

from Lowestoft; then you go back to one of the Scotsmen and say he

failed to pass his examination because he worked so hard with his

tutor; then, pausing for a moment upon the peculiar shape of an

undiscovered dagger, you tell us that the Scotsman has left off

going to church and you are on the right track. Frankly, if you

really do find something sacred about futile conversation, I should

say that you were on the track of that all right.”

“I know,” said Mr. Pond patiently, “all I’ve said is quite relevant

to what really happened; but, of course, you don’t know what really

happened. A story always does seem rambling and futile if you

leave out what really happened. That’s why newspapers are so dull.

All the political news, and much of the polite news (though rather

higher in tone than the other), is made quite bewildering and

pointless by the necessity of telling stories without telling the

story.”

“Well, then,” said Gahagan, “let us try to get some sense out of

all this nonsense, which has not even the excuses of newspaper

nonsense. To take one of your nonsense remarks as a test, why do

you say that Angus failed to pass because he worked so much with

his coach?”

“Because he didn’t work with his coach,” replied Pond. “Because I

didn’t say he worked with his coach. At least I didn’t say he

worked for the examination. I said he was with his coach. I said

he spent days and nights with his coach; but they weren’t preparing

for any examination.”

“Well, what were they doing?” asked Wotton gruffly.

“They were going on with the argument,” cried Pond, in a squeak

that was almost shrill. “They hardly stopped to sleep or eat; but

they went on with the argument; the argument interrupted at the

dinner-table. Have you never known any Scotsmen? Do you suppose

that a woman from Suffolk with a handful of cigarettes, and a

mouthful of irrelevance, can stop two Scotsmen from going on with

an argument when they’ve started it? They began it again when they

were getting their hats and coats; they were at it hammer and tongs

as they went out of the gate, and only a Scottish poet can describe

what they did then:

And the tane went hame with the ither; and then,

The tither went hame with the ither again.

“And for hours and weeks and months they never turned aside from

the same interminable debate on the thesis first propounded by Dr.

Campbell: that when a good man is well and truly convinced that a

bad man is actively bad for the community, and is doing evil on a

large scale which cannot be checked by law or any other action, the

good man has a moral right to murder the bad man, and thereby only

increases his own goodness.”

Pond paused a moment, pulling his beard and staring at the table;

then he began again:

“For reasons I’ve already mentioned but not explained—”

“That’s what’s the matter with you, my boy,” said Gahagan genially.

“There are always such a damned lot of things you have mentioned

but not explained.”

“For those reasons,” went on Pond deliberately, “I happen to know a

great deal about the stages of that stubborn and forcible

controversy, about which nobody else knew anything at all. For

Angus was a genuine truth-seeker who wished to satisfy his soul and

not merely to make his name; and Campbell was enough of a great man

to be quite as anxious to convince a pupil as to convince a crowd

in a lecture-room. But I am not going to tell you about those

stages of the controversy at any great length. To tell the truth,

I am not what people call impartial on this controversy. How any

man can form any conviction, and remain what they call impartial on

any controversy, is more than I have ever understood. But I

suppose they would say I couldn’t describe the debate fairly;

because the side I sympathize with was not the side that won.

“Society hostesses, especially when they come from near Lowestoft,

do not know where an argument is tending. They will drop not only

bricks but bombshells; and then expect them not to explode.

Anyhow, I knew where that argument at Glenorchy’s table was

tending. When Angus made a test of the Ten Commandments, and

Campbell said they were an Intelligence Test, I knew what would

come next. In another minute, he would be saying that nobody of

intelligence now troubles about the Ten Commandments.

“What a disguise there is in snowy hair and the paternal stoop of

age! Dickens somewhere describes a patriarch who needed no virtue

except his white hair. As Dr. Campbell smiled across the table at

Angus, most people saw nothing in that smile but patriarchal and

parental kindness. But I happened to see also a glint in the eye.

which told me that the old man was quite as much of a fighter as

the red-haired boy who had rashly challenged him. In some odd way,

indeed, I seemed suddenly to see old age itself as a masquerade.

The white hair had turned into a white wig, the powder of the

eighteenth century; and the smiling face underneath it was the face

of Voltaire.

“Dr. Andrew Glenlyon Campbell was a real philanthropist; so was

Voltaire. It is not always certain whether philanthropy means a

love of men, or of man, or of mankind. There is a difference. I

think he cared less about the individual than about the public or

the race; hence doubtless his gentle eccentricity of defending an

act of private execution. But anyhow, I knew he was one of the

grim line of Scottish sceptics, from Hume down to Ross or

Robertson. And, whatever else they are, they are stubborn and

stick to their point. Angus also was stubborn, and as I have

already said, he was a devout worshipper in the same dingy kirk as

the late James Haggis; that is, one of the extreme irreconcilable

sectaries of the seventeenth-century Puritanism. And so the

Scottish atheist and the Scottish Calvinist argued and argued and

argued, until milder races might have expected them to drop down

dead with fatigue. But it was not of disagreement that either of

them died.

“But the advantage was with the older and more learned man in his

attack; and you must remember that the younger man had only a

rather narrow and provincial version of the creed to defend. As I

say, I will not bore you with the arguments; I confess they rather

bore me. Doubtless Dr. Campbell said that the Ten Commandments

could not be of divine origin, because two of them are mentioned by

the virtuous Emperor Foo Chi, in the Second Dynasty; or one of them

is paraphrased by Synesius of Samothrace and attributed to the lost

code of Lycurgus.”

“Who was Synesius of Samothrace?” inquired Gahagan, with an

appearance of sudden and eager curiosity.

“He was a mythical character of the Minoan Age first discovered in

the twentieth century A.D.,” replied the unruffled Pond. “I made

him up just now; but you know the sort of thing I mean—the

mythical nature of Mount Sinai proved from the parallel myth that

the ark rested on Mount Ararat, and the mountain that would not

come to Mahomet. But all this textual criticism really affects a

religion only founded on texts. I knew how the fight was going;

and I knew when it ended. I knew when Robert Angus left off going

to kirk on the Sabbath.”

The end of the debate may best be described more directly; for,

indeed, Mr. Pond described it himself with a strange sort of

directness; almost as if he had unaccountably been present, or had

seen it in a vision. Anyhow, it appears that the operating-theatre

of the medical schools was the scene of the final phase of

disagreement and agreement. They had gone back there very late at

night, when the schools were closed and the theatre deserted,

because Angus fancied he had left some of his instruments there,

which it would be more neat and proper to lock up. There was no

sound in that hollow place but the echo of their own footsteps, and

very little light save a faint moonshine that trickled through the

cracks between the curtained windows. Angus had retrieved his

operating-tool, and was turning again towards the steep stairs that

climbed through the semi-circular rows of seats, when Campbell said

to him casually.

“Ye’ll find the facts I mentioned aboot the Aztec hymns in the—”

Angus tossed the tool on the table like a man throwing down his

sword, and turned on his companion with a new and transfigured air

of candour and finality.

“You needn’t trouble about hymns any more; I may as well tell you

that I’ve done with them, for one. You’re too strong for me—or,

rather, the truth is too strong for me. I’ve defended my own

nursery nightmare as long as I could; but you’ve woken me up at

last. You are right, you must be right; I don’t see any way out of

it.”

After a silence, Campbell answered very softly: “I’ll no mak’

apologies for fighting for the truth; but, man, ye made a real

bonny fight for the falsehood.”

It might well have seemed that the old blasphemer had never spoken

on the topic in a tone so delicate and respectful; and it seemed

strange that his new convert did not respond to the appeal.

Looking up, Campbell saw that his new convert’s attention had been

abruptly abstracted; he was standing staring at the implement in

his hand: a surgical knife made upon an odd pattern for special

purposes. At last he said in a hoarse and almost inaudible voice:

“A knife of an unusual shape.”

“See report o’ inquest on Jamie Haggis,” said the old man, nodding

benevolently. “Aye, ye’ve guessed richt, I’m thinking.” Then,

after a pause, he added, with equal calm:

“Noo that we are agreed, and a’ of one mind, aboot the need for sic

social surgery, it’s as weel ye should know the hale truth. Aye,

lad, I did it mysel’; and with a blade like yon. That nicht ye

took me to the kirk—weel, it’s the fairst time, I hope, I’ve ever

been hypocreetical; but I stayed behind to pray, and I think ye had

hopes of my convairsion. But I prayed because Jamie prayed; and

when he rose from his prayers, I followed him and killed him i’ the

kirkyard.”

Angus was still looking at the knife in silence; then he said

suddenly: “Why did you kill him?”

“Ye needna ask, noo we are agreed in moral philosophy,” replied the

old doctor simply. “It was just plain surgery. As we sacrifice a

finger to save the body, so we maun sacrifice a man to save the

body politic. I killed him because he was doing evil, and

inhumanly preventing what was guid for humanity: the scheme for the

slums and the lave. And I understand that, upon reflection, ye tak

the same view.”

Angus nodded grimly.

The proverb asks: “Who shall decide when doctors disagree?” But

in that dark and ominous theatre of doctoring the doctors agreed.

“Yes,” said Angus, “I take the same view. Also, I have had the

same experience.”

“And what’s that?” inquired the other.

“I have had daily dealings with a man I thought was doing nothing

but evil,” answered Angus. “I still think you were doing evil;

even though you were serving truth. You have convinced me that my

beliefs were dreams; but not that dreaming is worse than waking up.

You brutally broke the dreams of the humble, sneered at the weak

hopes of the bereaved. You seem cruel and inhuman to me, just as

Haggis seemed cruel and inhuman to you. You are a good man by your

own code, but so was Haggis a good man by his code. He did not

pretend to believe in salvation by good works, any more than you

pretended to believe in the Ten Commandments. He was good to

individuals, but the crowd suffered; you are good to the crowd and

an individual suffered. But, after all, you also are only an

individual.”

Something in the last words, that were said very softly, made the

old doctor stiffen suddenly and then start backwards towards the

steps behind. Angus sprang like a wildcat and pinned him to his

place with a choking violence; still talking, but now at the top of

his voice.

“Day after day, I have itched and tingled to kill you; and been

held back only by the superstition you have destroyed tonight. Day

after day, you have been battering down the scruples which alone

defended you from death. You wise thinker; you wary reasoner; you

fool! It would be better for you to-night if I still believed in

God and in his Commandment against murder.”

The old man twisted speechlessly in the throttling grip, but he was

too feeble, and Angus flung him with a crash across the operating-

table, where he lay as if fainting. Round them and above them the

empty tiers of concentric seats glimmered in the faint and frigid

moonlight as desolate as the Colosseum under the moon; a deserted

amphitheatre where there was no human voice to cry “Habet!” The

red-haired slayer stood with the knife uplifted, as strange in

shape as the flint knife of some prehistoric sacrifice; and still

he talked on in the high tones of madness.

“One thing alone protected you and kept the peace between us: that

we disagreed. Now we agree, now we are at one in thought—and

deed, I can do as you would do. I can do as you have done. We are

at peace.”

And with the sound of that word he struck; and Andrew Campbell

moved for the last time. In his own cold temple, upon his own

godless altar … he stirred and then lay still; and the murderer

bent and fled from the building and from the city and across the

Highland line at night, to hide himself in the hills.

When Pond had told this story, Gahagan rose slowly to his gigantic

height and knocked out his cigar in an ashtray: “I darkly suspect,

Pond,” he said, “that you are not quite so irrelevant as you sound.

Not quite irrelevant, I mean, even to our opening talk about

European affairs.”

“Tweedledum and Tweedledee agreed—to have a battle,” said Pond.

“We are rather easily satisfied with saying that some people like

Poles or Prussians or other foreigners have agreed. We don’t often

ask what they’ve agreed on. But agreement can be rather risky,

unless it’s agreement with the truth.”

Wotton looked at him with a smouldering suspicion; but finally

decided, with a sigh of relief, that it was only metaphysics.

POND THE PANTALOON

“No, no, no,” said Mr. Pond, with a gentle shrillness which he

occasionally showed, when any doubt was thrown on the prosaic

precision of his statements or arguments. “I did not say it was a

red pencil, and that was why it made such black marks. I said it

was relatively a red pencil, or resembled a red pencil, as compared

with Wotton’s view in regarding it as a blue pencil; and THAT was

why it made such black marks. The distinction may seem a small

one; but I assure you the most enormous errors arise out of this

habit of taking a remark out of its context, and then stating it

not quite correctly. The most ordinary and obvious truths, when

reported in that way, may be made to sound almost absurd.”

“Almost,” said Captain Gahagan, nodding gravely and gazing at the

little man opposite him, rather as if he were a mysterious monster

in a tank.

Mr. Pond was in his private tank, or private office, in a hive of

Government offices, sitting at a desk and busy at the work of blue-

pencilling the proofs of some official report; whence had arisen

the talk about the colour of the pencil. Pond, in short, was doing

his morning’s work as usual; Peter Gahagan was doing nothing, also

as usual; his large figure lounged in a chair that looked too small

for him; he was attached to Mr. Pond and even more attached to

watching other people work.

“I may resemble Polonius,” said Pond, modestly; and, indeed, his

old-fashioned beard, owlish expression and official courtliness

made the comparison almost apt. “I may be like Polonius; but I am

not Polonius—which is just the point I wish to illustrate. Hamlet

told Polonius that a cloud in the sky was like a camel. The effect

would have been somewhat different if Hamlet had stated, seriously

and scientifically, that he had seen a camel in the sky. In that

case, Polonius might have been pardoned in regarding the Prince’s

madness as finally proved. Touchy officials have been known to

express the view that you, my dear Gahagan, come into this office

like a buffalo, and there ‘lie wallowing through the long summer

day,’ as an outmoded poet puts it. But if the authorities of the

Zoo sent for you on the ground that you actually WERE a buffalo,

the department would hardly move in the matter without further

inquiries.”

“No doubt you have my dossier,” said Gahagan, “with official

calculations and statistics about the number of my legs, not to

mention my horns; all annotated with blue and red pencil—and most

certainly with some very black marks against my name. But that

brings me back to the original subject of my simple wonder. You

hardly seem to have noticed what was really peculiar in your own

remark. In any case, I do not quite understand what you mean by a

pencil being relatively red… .”

“Even that phrase might be defended,” observed Mr. Pond, with a

faint smile. “You would say, for instance, that my notes on this

proof are in blue pencil; and yet—” He held out a pencil with its

red chalk point towards the other. It looked like a mild conjuring

trick, until he twiddled it so as to show it was one of those

pencils sold by most stationers, with red at one end and blue at

the other. “Now suppose I wear down the blue point till it has

nearly gone (and really the misprints they can put into a simple

report on Baluchistan Bimetallism are incredible), then you would

say the pencil was relatively red, though still perhaps rather

blue. If the red end were worn away, you would say it was mostly

blue, though a little red.”

“I should say nothing of the sort,” exclaimed Gahagan with abrupt

impatience. “I should say what I said before; that the queer thing

about you is that you are quite blind to what was really mad in

your statement. You can’t see the paradox in your own remark. You

can’t see the point of your own remark.”

“The point of my remark,” said Mr. Pond, with dignity, “which I

thought I had made sufficiently clear, was that people are very

inexact in reporting statements, as in cases like a camel and

‘something like a camel.’”

Peter Gahagan continued to stare with round eyes at his friend,

like a buffalo in a very ruminant phase; and eventually heaved

himself up, collecting his grey top-hat and walking-stick with a

sort of clatter.

“No,” he said, “I will not point out the point. It would be

breaking a crystal or shattering a perfectly rounded soap-bubble.

To pierce the pure and spherical perfection of your maniacal calm

would be like invading the innocence of a child. If you really and

truly do not know when you are talking nonsense, if you do not even

notice what part of it is nonsense, I feel I must leave your

nonsensical intellect intact. I will go and talk it over with

Wotton. As he has often breezily observed, there is no nonsense

about him.”

And he sauntered out of the room, swinging his stick, in the

direction of the very important department presided over by Sir

Hubert Wotton; that he might enjoy the inspiriting spectacle of

another friend doing his day’s work and being interrupted by an

idle man.

Sir Hubert Wotton, however, was of a type somewhat different from

Mr. Pond; in that, even if he was busy, he was never fussy. Mr.

Pond was bent over the poised point of his blue pencil; Sir Hubert

was first visible behind the red end of a cigar, which he was

puffing, with a frown of reflection, as he turned over the papers

on his desk. He recognized the entry of the beaming Captain with a

grim but not ungracious smile, and waved him to a seat.

Gahagan sat down with his hands crossed on his stick and thumped it

on the floor.

“Wotton,” he said, “I’ve solved the problem of the Paradoxes of

Pond. He doesn’t know when he’s said these crazy things. There’s

a blind spot on his excellent brain, or a cloud comes over his mind

for a moment; and he forgets that he’s even said anything peculiar.

He goes on arguing about the reasonable part of his speech; he

never stops to explain the only thing that was really unreasonable.

He talked to me quite sensibly about a pencil that was bright red,

or something like it, and therefore marked very black on the paper.

I tried to nail him to that piece of inconsequence; and he

completely eluded me. He went on talking about when a blue pencil

was not a blue pencil; but he somehow forgot all about the black

marks.”

“Black marks!” said Wotton; and sat up so abruptly that he spilt

the ash of his cigar over his usually immaculate waistcoat. He

dusted off the defilement with a frown; and then, after a pause,

spoke in the staccato fashion that occasionally revealed that he

was much less conventional than he looked.

“Most fellows who talk paradoxes are only trying to show off. It’s

not like that with Pond; he does it because he’s trying NOT to show

off. You see—he looks a very sedentary, scientific little cuss,

as if he’d never been unhooked from a desk or a typewriter; but

he’s really had some very extraordinary experiences. He doesn’t

talk about them; he doesn’t want to talk about them; but he does

want to talk about reason and philosophy and theoretical things in

books; you know he loves reading all the rational eighteenth-

century literature. But when, in the course of talking in the

abstract, he comes on some concrete thing that he has actually DONE—

well, I can only say he crumples it up. He tries to crush it into

a small space and it simply sounds contradictory. Almost every one

of those crazy sentences simply stands for one of the adventures in

what would be called by most people a very unadventurous life.”

“I think I see what you mean,” said Gahagan, after a pause of

radiant reflection. “Yes, you’re right. You can’t expect me to be

taken in, mind you, by most of your swagger of stoicism in the

English public-school man. Half the time they are simply showing

off by not showing off. But in Pond it’s genuine. He really does

hate the limelight; in that way you may say he was made for the

Secret Service. And you mean that he only becomes mysterious, in

this particular manner, when he really does want to keep the secret

of his services. In other words, you mean there is a story behind

every paradox of Pond. Certainly that is true—of all those cases

when I have been told the story.”

“I know all about this story,” said Wotton, “and it was one of the

most remarkable things that Pond ever did. It was a matter of

immense importance—the sort of public affair that has to be kept a

very private affair. Pond gave two pieces of advice, which some

thought very odd and which turned out exactly right; and he ended

by making a rather extraordinary discovery. I don’t know how he

came to mention it just now; but I’m pretty sure it was by

accident. When it turned up, he tried to tuck it away again in a

hurry and change the subject. But he certainly saved England; also

he nearly got killed.”

“What!” exclaimed Gahagan with some astonishment.

“The fellow must have fired five times at him,” said Wotton

reminiscently, “before he turned the sixth shot on himself.”

“Well, I’m blowed,” said the Captain elegantly. “I always thought

Pond the most charming of tea-table comedies; I never knew he

figured in a melodrama. I should as soon have thought of his

figuring in a fairy-pantomime. But he seems somehow associated

with theatrical things at the moment. He asked me himself if he

was like Polonius; and I suppose some malicious people would say he

was more like Pantaloon. I like the notion of you and he magically

transplanted to a Christmas pantomime: ‘Harlequin Hubert and the

Fairies’ Pond,’ all ending with a real Harlequinade, with red fire

and the Pantaloon falling over the Policeman. Pardon my talking

nonsense—you know my unfortunate mind only becomes fertile about

impossible things.”

“It’s curious you should call it impossible,” said Sir Hubert

Wotton, knitting his brows, “because that’s almost exactly what

really happened to us.”

Sir Hubert Wotton showed a certain reticence and deliberate

vagueness about the official details of the story; even in telling

it after so many years to an intimate friend. In England

especially, there are enormous events which never get into the

newspapers, and are apparently intended never to get into the

history-books. It may be enough to say here that there was at one

time under the surface, but very near to the surface, a conspiracy

aiming at a coup d’état, which was backed by a Continental Power of

similar leanings. Gun-running, secret drilling and plans for

stealing State documents were involved; and it was feared that a

certain number of minor officials had been corrupted or converted

by the conspirators. Hence, when it was a question of sending

certain very private official documents (about the nature of which

Wotton remained somewhat hazy to the end) from one of the great

northern ports to a particular Government department in London, the

first Council was a very small and select one, presided over by Sir

Hubert and held in the smaller office of Mr. Pond. Indeed, Mr.

Pond was the official in charge of the job. The only other person

permanently present was one of the first officials from Scotland

Yard; Wotton had brought his clerk with him to arrange and explain

certain matters; but had later made an excuse for sending the man

out on an errand. Dyer, the detective from the Yard, a heavy-

shouldered, hard-headed person with a toothbrush moustache,

explained methodically, if a little mechanically, the precautions

and arrangements he would consider necessary for protecting the

transport of the papers to their destination. He wanted an

armoured car with a machine-gun, a certain number of men carrying

concealed arms, a police search of everybody involved in first

dispatching and in finally receiving the box or parcel—and several

other conditions of the kind.

“Pond will think all this terribly expensive,” said Wotton, with a

sad smile. “Pond is quite the Old Liberal in the matter of economy

and retrenchment. But he will agree that we are all bound to show

particular care in this case.”

“N-no,” said Mr. Pond, pursing his lips dubiously. “I don’t think

I should show any particular care in this case.”

“Not show any particular care!” repeated the astonished Wotton.

“I certainly shouldn’t SHOW it,” said Mr. Pond. “In such cases,

nobody of sense would take such particular precautions, any more

than anybody would send an important letter by registered post.”

“Well, you must pardon my dullness,” said Sir Hubert, “but, as a

matter of fact, I have heard of people sending an important letter

by registered post.”

“It is done, I believe,” said Mr. Pond, with distant disparagement.

“But that is when you are trying to prevent a letter being lost.

Just now you are trying to prevent a letter being found.”

“That sounds rather interesting,” said Dyer, with some restrained

amusement.

“Don’t you see? It’s quite simple,” answered Pond. “If you want

to prevent a document from being dropped down a drain, or thrown

into a dustbin, or used to light the fire or to make a bird’s nest,

or any other accident of neglect, then it is a good thing to draw

attention to it, by stamping or sealing or safeguarding it in some

particular way. But if you want to prevent it from being tracked

and spotted and snatched out of your hands, by violence or

stratagem, then it’s the worst thing in the world to mark it in a

particular way. Registration, for instance, doesn’t mean that your

messenger can’t be knocked on the head or have his pocket picked.

It only means that your messenger or his department can be held

responsible; may have to apologize or compensate. But you don’t

want apologies or compensations; you want the letter. I should say

it would be far safer from a watchful enemy, if it were unmarked

and sent along with a thousand others looking exactly the same.”

It is a tribute to the essential shrewdness, underlying the

apparent woodenness of Wotton and Dyer, that the paradox of Pond

prevailed. The documents, however, were too bulky to be treated as

ordinary letters; and after some discussion, they were placed in

one of a large number of white wooden boxes, light and not very

large, which were in general use for sending chocolate and other

provisions to the army or navy or some branches of the public

service. The only part of his original program on which the hard-

headed Dyer continued to insist was that of putting guards and

searchers at essential points of the route of travel.

“I suppose there’ll be some damned fuss about it afterwards,” he

said, “and people will pester us about interfering with the liberty

of the subject. We’re handicapped in this confounded constitutional

country. Now if we were in—”

He shut his mouth rather sharply, as a discreet knock sounded on

the door, and Sir Hubert’s clerk glided in to say he had discharged

his commission. Sir Hubert did not see him at first, his frowning

gaze being fixed on the railway-map of the route to be pursued; and

Dyer happened at the moment to be examining very closely the white

deal box, which had already been selected and sent in as a sample.

But Mr. Pond noticed the clerk; and could not help thinking that he

was rather worth noticing. He was a young man named Franks, with

fair hair correctly flattened, and neat enough in figure and

costume; but his wide face had that indescribable look which is

sometimes seen, of which we can only say that it suggests the large

head on the little figure of a dwarf, or perhaps that sunken

between the shoulders of a hunchback; the face is not normal, even

upon a normal figure. But the other causes which arrested Mr.

Pond’s eye for a moment were, first, the fact that the clerk was

noticeably ill at ease when he silently handed papers to his

superior; and, last but not least, that he had started visibly when

he saw the detective from Scotland Yard.

The second Council, if it may be called so, was held in what all

agreed was the strategical centre of the whole manoeuvre: a certain

railway-junction in the Midlands. It so happened that the

consignment of boxes, along with mailbags and similar things, had

to be shifted here from one train to another, which came up

afterwards to the same platform. It was at this point that there

was most possibility of any interference from outside; and it is to

be feared that Dyer stretched several points in his reluctant

compromise with the British Constitution, in the matter of police

orders which stopped, detained or examined persons attempting to

enter or leave the station.

“I have told our people they mustn’t even let US out of the

station,” he said, “without close examination, for fear somebody

should have a fancy for dressing up as Mr. Pond.”

“It has quite a festive sound, so near Christmas,” said Mr. Pond

dolefully. “So I take it that for the present we must stay on the

station; and one can hardly say it looks particularly festive.”

Nothing, indeed, can well look more desolate than one of the

numerous side platforms of an empty railway-station on a dreary

winter day; unless it is the empty Third Class Waiting-Room which

is provided to be a human refuge from the winter blast. Somehow

the waiting-room looks even less human than the platform from which

it is a refuge; hung with a few printed notices that nobody could

possibly read, tables of trains or dusty plans of railways,

equipped in one corner with broken pens with which nobody could

write, and dried inkstands containing no ink to write with; with

one dab of dull colours, the faded advertisement of an insurance

company. It certainly seemed to the casual mind a godforsaken

place to be spending any part of Christmas; but Mr. Pond had a

stoical cheerfulness under such circumstances which rather

surprised those who only knew his catlike love of comfortable

domestic routine.

He entered this empty and unsightly apartment with a brisk step,

stopping for a moment to stare reflectively at the dried ink and

broken pens on the corner table.

“Well,” he said, turning away, “they couldn’t do very much with

those, anyhow; but, of course, they might have pencils or fountain-

pens. I’m rather glad I did it, on the whole.”

“Pond,” said Wotton gravely, “this is in your department anyhow;

and I’m sure that Dyer will agree that we’ve done well to follow

your advice so far. But I hope you don’t mind my having a mild

curiosity about what it is that you’ve done.”

“Not at all,” replied Pond. “Perhaps I ought to have told you

about it before. Very likely I ought to have done it before. But

just after you’d been good enough to let me have my own way, about

sending it along with all the other stuff in plain identical boxes,

I sat down and had a hard think about what would be the next best

precaution following on that. I’m pretty certain that if it had

been taken in a special car by armed men, that car would have been

wrecked and those armed men perhaps robbed by force of arms;

anyhow, there was too much of a risk of it. There’s a much more

elaborate gangster organization working against us already than

most people have any notion of; and to multiply purchases and

preparations is to multiply clues and transactions for their spies

to trail. But I don’t think the gangs could possibly get in here,

especially now that the police are holding the gates of all these

stations like fortresses. An isolated man or so could do very

little against them. But what could an isolated man do?”

“Well,” said Wotton rather impatiently. “What could he do?”

“As I say,” continued Mr. Pond calmly, “I sat down and had a good

think about what a spy or stray intruder might do, in a quiet way

without any noise of battle, murder or sudden death, if he did

manage somehow to spot the right box. So I got on to the private

telephone to headquarters; and told them to see that the postal and

transport authorities held up every one of the boxes or packages on

which the address seemed to have been altered; anything crossed out

or anything substituted. A man might conceivably snatch a moment

to re-direct a box to some of his friends in London; though he

could never take the box out of the station without being searched.

That’s what I did; and it was these broken-down penholders that

reminded me of it. It’s a pretty broken-down place to spend

Christmas in, as you say; they have given us a sort of a fire,

which is more than some waiting-rooms do; but it looks as if it

were dying of depression; and I don’t wonder.”

He stirred up the neglected fire, making quite a creditable blaze,

with his usual instinct for the comforts of life; then he added:

“I hope you don’t disagree with that second precaution of mine.”

“No; I think that also is a very sensible precaution; though I hope

there is no chance of anybody hitting on the right box, even by

accident.” Hubert Wotton frowned a moment at the renewed flame and

the dancing sparks, and then said gloomily, “This is about the time

when people at Christmas are going to the pantomime. Or, at any

rate, to the pictures.”

Mr. Pond nodded; he seemed to be suddenly smitten with a fit of

abstraction. At last he said:

“I sometimes wonder whether things weren’t better when pictures

meant the pictures in the fire, instead of the pictures on the

film.”

Sir Hubert Wotton gruffly suggested, in a general way, that the

dingy fire in a Third Class Waiting-Room was not one in which he

would prefer to look for pictures.

“The fire pictures, like the cloud pictures,” went on Mr. Pond,

“are just incomplete enough to call out the imagination to complete

them. Besides,” he added, cheerfully poking the fire, “you can

stick a poker into the coals and break them up into a different

picture; whereas, if you push a great pole through the screen

because you don’t like the face of a film-star, there is all sorts

of trouble.”

Dyer, who had stamped out on to the platform during this

imaginative interlude, returned at this moment with highly

practical news. By exploring many tunnels, and scouring many

platforms on that labyrinthine junction, he had found that there

really was a remote refreshment-room, in which it was possible to

have some sort of lunch; which had been a silent problem for all

three of the officials involved.

“I’ll stay on this platform,” he said; “in fact I shall stay on

this platform all night if necessary. This is my particular job.

But you go and get your lunch first and come back; and I’ll see if

I can get some afterwards. Never mind about the trains; I’ve

arranged for all that; and, anyhow, I shall be there when the only

possible moment of danger comes.”

In fact, his last words were almost drowned in the throb and racket

of the approach of the first train. They all saw the mailbags and

boxes and packages duly put out on the platform; and then Wotton, a

man of regular habits, who was beginning to feel rather peckish,

was easily persuaded by Dyer to accept his arrangement and go in

search of a bite of food. Wotton and Pond dispatched their rather

meagre lunch with reasonable rapidity; but even so had occasion to

quicken their footsteps as they came within sight of their own

original platform; since a train, which was apparently the second

train, was beginning to shift and puff out of the station; and when

they rejoined their companion, the platform was already bare.

“All safe,” said Dyer, with satisfaction. “I saw all the boxes and

things into the van myself; and nobody’s been here to interfere

with them. Our main trouble is really over; and I shouldn’t mind

having a little lunch myself.”

He grinned at them, rubbing his hands in a congratulatory manner;

and as he turned towards the subterranean passages, they turned

once more with the intention of returning to the hollow and smoky

cell of the waiting-room.

“It does seem as if there were nothing more for us to do here,”

said Wotton. “It rather increases the freezing futility of this

shack.”

“I consider it quite a Christmas triumph,” said Mr. Pond, with

undiminished cheerfulness, “that we have managed to keep the fire

in, anyhow… . Why, I believe it’s begun to snow.”

For some time they had noted that the afternoon, already darkening

towards the early winter evening, had something of that lurid

greenish light which often glows under the load of snow-clouds; a

sprinkling began to fall as they went along the apparently

interminable platform; and by the time they reached the austere

waiting-room, its roof and doorway were powdered with silver. The

fire was burning briskly inside; Dyer had evidently been keeping

himself warm.

“It’s devilish queer,” said Wotton, “but the whole thing is really

beginning to look like a Christmas card. Our dismal salle

d’attente will soon be a parody of Father Christmas’s cottage in a

pantomime.”

“The whole thing is like the parody of a pantomime,” said Pond in a

lower and more disquieted tone, “and as you say, it is very queer.”

After a pause, Wotton added abruptly:

“What is worrying you, Pond?”

“I’m wondering, if not worrying,” answered Pond, “about exactly

what a man WOULD do to intercept or misdirect that box, in a place

like this, with no pens or anything… . Of course, there’s not

much in that; he might have a fountain-pen or a pencil.”

“Oh, you’ve settled all that; you seem to be mad on pencils,” said

Wotton impatiently. “It comes of always blue-pencilling those

everlasting proofs of yours.”

“It wouldn’t be a blue pencil,” said Pond, shaking his head. “I

was thinking of something more like a red pencil; which would mark

very black indeed. But what bothers me is that there are always

more ways of doing anything than you’d fancy, even in a place like

this.”

“But you’ve blocked all that already,” insisted the other; “by

telephoning as you did.”

“Well,” said Pond obstinately, “and what would they do then; if

they knew I’d telephoned?”

Wotton looked puzzled; and Pond sat down in silence, stirring the

fire and staring at it.

After a silence he said abruptly: “I wish Dyer were back.”

“What do you want him now for?” asked his friend. “I should say

he’d earned a little late lunch. As far as I can see, he’s

finished the business; and it’s all over here.”

“I fear,” said Pond, without taking his head out of the fireplace,

“that it’s only just going to begin.”

There was another silence of growing mystification, like the

gathering darkness outside. And then Pond observed suddenly:

“I suppose we’ve come back to the right platform.”

Wotton’s face only expressed the stolid stupefaction natural under

the circumstances; but in his depths, which were deeper than some

supposed, an unearthly chill touched him for the first time.

Nightmare stirred in its sleep; not the mere practical perplexity

of a problem, but all those doubts beyond reason which revolve

round place and time. Before he could speak, Pond added:

“This is a different shaped poker.”

“What the devil do you mean?” exploded Wotton at last. “They have

locked up the station; and there is nobody on it but ourselves;

except that girl in the bar. You don’t imagine she has put a new

set of furniture and fire-irons in all the waiting-rooms?”

“No,” said Mr. Pond. “I didn’t say a new poker. I said a new

shape of poker.”

Almost as he spoke, he leapt away from the fireplace, leaving the

poker in the fire, and ran to the doorway, craning out his head and

listening. His companion listened also; and recognized as an

objective reality, which was no nightmare, a noise of scrambling

footsteps somewhere on the platform. But, when they ran out, the

platform appeared to be perfectly empty, now a blank and solid

table of snow; and they began to realize that the noise came from

underneath their feet. Looking over the railing, they saw that the

whole raised woodwork of the station was intercepted at one point

by a belt of grassy embankment, very grey and discoloured with the

smoke; they were just in time to see a dark lean figure scramble up

this bank and dive under the platform, in such a manner that he was

able the next moment to crawl out on the line. Then he calmly

mounted the platform, and stood there like a passenger waiting for

a train.

Apart from the fact that the stranger had practically burgled the

station, against such very special difficulties, Wotton’s mind,

already full of suspicions, decided at a glance that he was very

much of a dark horse. Curiously enough, he looked a little like a

horse, having a long equine visage and a strange sort of stoop; he

was swarthy and haggard and his hollow eyes were such dense patches

of shadow that it was a sort of shock to realize that the eyes

within were glaring. He was dressed with the last extreme of

shabbiness, in a long threadbare and almost ragged waterproof; and

they thought they had never seen before a face and figure so

symbolic of desolation and dreary tragedy. It seemed to Wotton

that he himself had his first real glimpse of those depths in which

despair manufactures the many revolutionary movements which it had

been his duty to combat; but, of necessity, his duty prevailed.

He stepped up to the man, asking him who and what he was, and why

he had thus evaded the police blockade. The man appeared to ignore

the other questions for the moment; but in answer to the question

about what he was, his tragic lantern-jaw moved and emitted a very

unexpected reply.

“I am a Clown,” he said in a depressed voice.

At this answer Mr. Pond seemed to start with altogether a new sort

of surprise. He had ruminated on the puzzles hitherto, like one

pursuing the study of things which some might find surprising, but

at which he himself was no longer very much surprised. But he

gaped helplessly at this as a man does at a miracle; or still more,

in a case like this, at a coincidence. Then another and yet more

undignified change came over him. It can only be said that, having

begun by goggling, he ended by giggling.

“Oh, Lord, this is an extra!” he exclaimed, and seemed once more

broken up by almost senile laughter. “This has nothing to do with

the story; but it is a marvellous addition to the pantomime. I

always noticed that the chief features in the pantomime had nothing

to do with the story.”

But Sir Hubert Wotton was having no more for the moment of Mr.

Pond’s fanciful mysteries; least of all, of the last and most

mysterious, the mystery of his mirth. He had already begun to

cross-examine the stranger in the style of the police; and the

stranger stood up to him with gloomy but unshaken lucidity. His

name, by his own account, was Hankin, and he was a public

entertainer who also gave private entertainments; who was, indeed,

only too glad to give any entertainments, in the depressed

condition of his state of livelihood. He had an engagement to

perform as clown at a children’s party that evening, and had

insisted on the necessity of catching a particular train; nor had

he been cheered by the assurance of the police at the entrance that

regular trains for passengers would be running again in an hour, at

a time that would make him too late for his appointment; and lose

him the first few shillings he had earned in many months. He had

done what many such people would probably have been glad to do, if

they had had the activity and audacity, and had climbed into the

station by an unguarded loophole. This statement was made with

firmness and simplicity, and Pond evidently believed it; but Wotton

was still smouldering with some suspicions.

“I must ask you to come with us to the waiting-room,” he said.

“Have you anything about you to confirm your story?”

“I haven’t got my visiting-card,” said the sombre Mr. Hankin. “I

lost it along with my Rolls-Royce and my little castle in Scotland.

But you can see me in my resplendent and fashionable evening-dress,

if you like. I think that ought to convince you.”

The man was carrying a shabby and misshapen bag, which he lugged

along to the waiting-room; and there, before the staring eyes of

Wotton, he stripped off his waterproof and appeared in a sort of

white circus dress, but for retaining his shabby boots and

trousers. Then he dived into the bag and brought out a monstrous

grinning and glaring white mask, picked out with red ornaments, and

fitted it on his head. And there, solid and seemingly incredible

before their eyes, was the genuine clown of the old-fashioned

pantomime, such as they had been discussing.

“He came up through a trapdoor, I suppose we must say,” murmured

the awestruck Mr. Pond. “But I feel as if he had fallen out of the

sky like the snow. Fate or the fairies have added this final

touch; see how they built up gradually round us the whole palace of

pantomime in this wilderness; first the firelight and then the snow

and now the only original ‘Here We Are Again!’ Such a cosy happy

Christmas! Screams of joy from all the tiny tots… . Oh, my

God, how ghastly it all is!”

His friend looked at him and received a second shock in realizing

that the bearded face, though it still wore the elfish look of its

first amusement at the accident, was in fact terribly pale.

“And the ghastliest part of it,” said Mr. Pond, “is that I am going

to complete your costume, Sir.”

He suddenly plucked out the poker, from where it was standing in

the fire, and it emerged already red-hot. He handed it politely to

the Clown.

“I may look like a pantaloon,” he said, “but this will obviously be

more suitable to the Clown. This is the red-hot poker, with which

you make the Policeman jump.”

Wotton stared at a scene to which he had now entirely lost the

clue; and in the silence that followed, the long platform outside

resounded with a firm and heavy stride coming nearer and nearer.

The large figure of Dyer the detective appeared framed in the

doorway; and he stood as if turned to stone by what he saw.

Wotton was not astonished at his astonishment. He presumed that it

was an astonishment like his own, at the irrelevant intrusion of

the pantomime figure. But Pond was watching more closely; and for

Pond that moment was the confirmation of the creeping suspicion

that had worked its way into his mind for the last hour or so.

Nobody could have been surprised at Dyer staring at the Clown. But

Dyer was not staring at the Clown. Nor was Dyer merely astonished;

perhaps the most astonishing thing was that he was not exactly

astonished. He was staring only at the poker; and he obviously saw

nothing funny about it. His face was distorted by almost demoniac

fear and fury; and he looked at the red pantomime poker rather as

if it had been the flaming sword of an accusing angel.

“Yes, it’s the red-hot poker,” said Pond, in a low and almost

forced voice, “and it does make the policeman jump.”

The policeman jumped; he jumped back three paces, and as he leapt

he loosened a big official revolver and fired at Mr. Pond again and

again; the shocks of explosion shaking the thin shanty in which

they stood. The first shot buried itself in the wall about an inch

from Mr. Pond’s dome-like forehead; the other four went rather

wild; for Wotton and the stranger had woken up to the situation and

were struggling with the would-be assassin, and forcing his hand

away. Finally, he managed to wrench his hand loose again and twist

the pistol inwards upon himself; the body of the big man stiffened

in their arms; and Dyer of the detective service lay dead on the

floor before the dancing fire.

The explanation of events was given by Mr. Pond some time later;

for his first action after the catastrophe left no time for

explanations. He had repeatedly, at intervals, looked at the clock

in the waiting-room, and seemed satisfied; but he was leaving

nothing to chance. He darted out of the door, raced down the

platform, and found his way to the telephone-box he had used

earlier in the day. He came out wiping his brow, in spite of the

cold; but wearing a smile of relative relief in the midst of the

tragedy. When asked what he was doing, he answered simply: “I was

telephoning a description of the package. It’ll be all right now;

they will hold it up.”

“Do you mean THE package?” asked Wotton. “I thought that was just

like all the rest.”

“I’ll tell you all about it presently,” replied Pond. “Let us go

and take a polite farewell of the public entertainer, who has given

us such a delightful entertainment. I really think we ought to

give him a fiver or so in compensation.”

Wotton was very much the gentleman, in the more generous sense, and

he heartily agreed to this; and, though it was difficult for the

melancholy man with the horse-face to produce anything nearer to a

laugh than a neigh, he was manifestly much cheered internally and

his gaunt face was cracked with a crooked smile. Then, by way of

finishing their Christmas feast on this curious scene of festivity,

the two friends adjourned to the one and only refreshment-room and

sat down behind two tall glasses of beer; having no taste for

warming their hands at that rather too blood-red fire that still

burned in the sinister waiting-room.

“It was curious you were able to corner Dyer like that,” said

Wotton. “I never had a thought of him.”

“I never had a thought of him either,” said Pond, “and he cornered

himself, just as he killed himself. I fancy many conspirators are

really chasing themselves into corners like that. Don’t you see

that he locked himself into a logical prison, when he would empty

and close the whole station, to impress us with his efficiency. By

the way, I ought to have guessed there was a double meaning in his

dictatorial ways and demands to override the Constitution; he was

talking exactly as our enemies and their foreign friends talk. But

the point is this. I wasn’t thinking about him particularly; I

never thought of him at all until I found him wandering about

inside the logical square or enclosure, like a rectangle in

geometry. I was thinking all the time about one thing: what would

these people probably do to divert or intercept the box, now that

they could hardly do it by direct attack or anything that made a

noise? I was more and more convinced they would try to redirect it

somehow, so that its going normally through the post would serve

them and not us. So I warned the authorities to stop all altered

addresses on suspicion; and I said to myself: What will the enemy

do now? What can he do, shut up in this enormous shed, bare of all

conveniences and appliances? But don’t you see that with that very

thought came the overpowering suspicion of who the enemy was?

“Nobody was there but you and Dyer when I said I had ‘phoned to

stop all altered addresses. I know in a mystery story I should

have to allow for the station being thronged with silent

eavesdroppers, a spy up the chimney and another crawling out of the

luggage; but in practical life it doesn’t happen. We heard the one

and only intruder, when he began to scramble up from the street.

The man who did hear it was Dyer; and notice that he almost

immediately wandered away up the platform, professing to find our

luncheon place for us; but really striding up and down and brooding

upon what the devil he should do next, for I am sure his original

plan had been to alter the address as I suggested. Was there

anything else in that bare beastly place he could use for the same

purpose, or another similar purpose? There was. But I never

guessed what it was, until I came back to the waiting-room and

happened to look at the poker. I saw it was twisted at a slightly

different angle; that could only mean it had been red-hot and

hammered half crooked like a horseshoe on the anvil. And then, of

course, I realized that a red-hot poker would serve as well as a

pen or pencil, or rather better, for altering an inscription on a

wooden box. A pen could only cross it out; but a poker could burn

it out. Managed neatly, it might well remove all trace of there

ever having been any label or previous inscription at all. But it

would do a great deal more than that. The clown is not the only

artist who wields a poker; there is the whole elegant craft called

poker-work. It would be quite easy to change the whole appearance

of a white deal box, so that it would no longer be classed with the

other boxes; running a black border round it, covering it with a

pattern, perhaps blackening it almost entirely. Then in one blank

space left he would brand the address he wanted it to reach, very

plain in black block letters, avoiding incidentally all the dangers

of being traced by handwriting. The thing would have gone through

the post to that address as a separate thing in an ordinary way;

and our scheme for posting it in an ordinary way would have

recoiled on our heads. As it was, I was just in time to describe

the poker-work box and stop it. I made a silly joke about a red

pencil marking black; but even then I had barely begun to suspect

Dyer; I’m ashamed to say the only person I began by suspecting was

your unfortunate clerk Franks, who is rather exceptionally

innocent.”

“Franks!” exclaimed Wotton. “Why on earth did you suspect him?”

“Because I was an ass,” said Pond, “and much more like a Pantaloon

than you may imagine. He’s a queer-looking fellow; but I ought

to have known that suffering sort of look is more often

conscientiousness than unconscientiousness. But where I was a

priceless ass was when I looked at the suspect instead of looking

at the detective. At that moment, Dyer was holding the box up,

looking at it very closely; and Franks, from the other side, could

see that he made a minute mark on it, very unobtrusively; so that

he would know it again. Franks knew about the box scheme; and

seeing that very swift and furtive act, he started and stared; and

I don’t wonder. In fact, Franks was the real detective and was far

ahead of me, for I hadn’t suspected Dyer at all. Not till, so to

speak, I actually found him like a burglar on the premises. I

might say on the logical premises.” He coughed slightly. “Pray

excuse the pun.”

“Well,” said Captain Gahagan, when Wotton had told him the story

long afterwards. “My favourite character in your drama is the

Clown. He is so irrelevant. I am like that myself. I am so

irrelevant.”

“You are,” said Sir Hubert Wotton, and resumed the study of his

documents.

“He is like the Clown in Shakespeare,” went on Gahagan with

unchanged buoyancy. “The Clown in Shakespeare seems to be there by

accident unconnected with the story and yet he is the chorus of the

tragedy. The Fool is like a fantastic dancing flame lighting up

the features and furniture of the dark house of death. Perhaps we

may connect Pond and Polonius after all.” And he continued to

illustrate his theory of the buffoons in Shakespeare, a dramatic

poet to whom he was fervently devoted, quoting large portions of

the plays in question in the old oratorical Irish fashion, to the

no small aid and acceleration of the business of the department,

busy at the moment with oppressing and delicate problems about

American claims concerning the commerce of Vancouver.

THE UNMENTIONABLE MAN

Mr. Pond was eating oysters—a serious and improving sight. His

friend Wotton did not care for oysters; saying he could not see the

sense of swallowing something you could hardly taste. He often

said he could not see the sense of things; and was deaf to the

wistful questions of his friend Gahagan, about whether he might

perhaps see the nonsense. There was no nonsense about Sir Hubert

Wotton; and there was a great deal of nonsense about Captain

Gahagan. Gahagan enjoyed oysters, yet one could not say he cared

for them, being a careless card; and the towers of oyster-shells

before him showed that he had enjoyed them rapidly and recklessly,

as a mere hors d’oeuvre. But Mr. Pond was really caring for

oysters: counting them like sheep and consuming them with the

utmost care.

“It is comparatively little known,” observed Gahagan, “that Pond

actually is an oyster. He builds up out of oysters the permanent

type or image. Hasty naturalists (I need only name the impetuous

Pilk) have repeated the report that he resembles a fish. But what

a fish! It was left to the researches of Nibbles, in his epoch-

making work, Pondus Ostroanthropus, or The Human Oyster Revealed,

to give our friend his high and rightful rank in the biological

order. I need not trouble you with the arguments. Pond wears a

beard. He and the oyster alone confront the world of modern

fashions with such a decoration. When he shuts up his head he is

as close as an oyster. When he persuades us to swallow something,

it is only afterwards (as we have often agreed) that we realize

what a monster of the deep we have swallowed. But, above all,

within that oyster are the paradoxes; which are pearls of great

price.” And he waved a glass towards Pond, as if concluding a

speech and proposing a toast.

Mr. Pond bowed gravely and swallowed another oyster. “As a matter

of fact, I was reminded of something relevant to the discussion by

the sight of the oysters; or, more strictly, of the oyster-shells.

This question of deporting dangerous characters, even when they are

only suspects, has some curious and baffling problems. I remember

one rather queer case, in which a government had to consider the

deporting of a desirable alien—”

“I suppose you mean an undesirable alien,” said Wotton.

Mr. Pond digested another oyster with an unobtrusive gulp and

continued: ”… the deporting of a desirable alien; and it found

that the difficulties were really quite insurmountable. I assure

you I am describing the peculiar position in perfectly appropriate

terms. If any point might be questioned, it is not so much the

word ‘desirable’ as the word ‘alien.’ In one sense, he might have

been described as a very desirable native.”

“Oysters,” said Gahagan mournfully. “The Mind is still brooding

upon oysters. They are certainly very desirable natives.”

“If he was not desirable, he was at least desired,” continued the

unruffled Pond. “No, my dear Gahagan, when I say ‘desired,’ I do

not mean ‘wanted by the police.’ I mean that nearly everybody

wanted him to stay, and that was why it seemed obvious that he must

go. He was something which, without profanity, I trust, I might

call the desire of all nations; or what poets have described as the

world’s desire. And yet he was not deported. Although he was

desired, he was not deported. That is the only real paradox.”

“Oh,” said the staring Wotton. “So that’s the real paradox.”

“You should remember something of the case, Wotton,” went on Mr.

Pond. “It was about that time when we went over to Paris together

about a rather delicate—”

“Pond in Paris,” murmured Gahagan. “Pond in his Pagan Youth, when

(as Swinburne says so beautifully) ‘Love was the pearl of his

oyster and Venus rose red out of wine.’”

“Paris is on the way to many capitals,” replied Pond with

diplomatic reserve. “In any case, there is no need to define the

precise scene of this little international problem. Suffice it to

say that it was one of those many modern States in which a

Republic, resting on representative and democratic claims, has now

long replaced a Monarchy which disappeared somehow amid all the

modern wars and revolutions. Like many such, it did not find all

its troubles were over with the establishment of political

equality; in face of a world deeply disturbed about economic

equality. When I went there, a strike in the transport services

had brought the life of the capital to a deadlock; the Government

was accused of being under the influence of a millionaire named

Kramp, who controlled the lines involved; and the crisis was the

more alarming because it was insisted (on the Government side) that

the strike was secretly engineered by the famous terrorist,

Tarnowski, sometimes called the Tiger of Tartary, who having been

exiled from his own part of Eastern Europe, was believed to be

spreading conspiracies from some unknown hiding-place in the West.”

Mr. Pond then proceeded to narrate his little experience, which,

when purged of Gahagan’s interruptions and Pond’s somewhat needless

exactitudes, was substantially this.

Pond was rather lonely in this strange capital; for Wotton had gone

elsewhere on the other delicate mission; and, having no friends,

Pond picked up only a few acquaintances. But he picked up at least

three acquaintances who turned out to be rather interesting in

various ways. The first case was commonplace enough, it might

seem; consisting merely of talking to a bookseller who was

otherwise a fairly ordinary shopkeeper, but well acquainted with

early eighteenth-century scientific books; and the period was a

hobby with Pond. Otherwise Mr. Huss was highly bourgeois, with a

heavy frockcoat and long, antiquated whiskers which met under his

chin in a patriarchal beard. When he went outside his shop, which

was not often, he wore a funereal chimney-pot hat. Scientific

studies seemed to have left in him the sort of stagnant atheism

that is at once respectable and depressing; but beyond that there

was nothing to distinguish him from countless Continental

shopkeepers. The next man with whom Pond fell into any sort of

conversation, in a café, was much more vigorous and vigilant, and

belonged to a younger world. But he also was very serious; a dark,

strenuous young man who was a Government official actually

believing in the Government; or at least in the principles of the

Government; and he was the sort of man who thinks first about

principles. He denounced the strike and even the trade union; not

because he was a snob, for he lived as simply as a workman; but

because he really did believe in the old individualistic theory of

what he called free contract. The type is almost unknown in

England; the theory is more common in America. But nobody who

looked at the baldish, rather corrugated brow that bulged between

the streaks of black hair, and the anxious, though angry, eyes,

could doubt that he was in fanatical good faith. His name was

Marcus, and he held a minor Government office, in which he could

survey with satisfaction the principles of the Republic, without

being admitted to its counsels. It was while talking outside a

café with this second acquaintance, that Mr. Pond became conscious

of the third, who was by far the most extraordinary of the three.

This man was a sort of magnet for the human eye; Pond soon realized

that this was true of everybody’s eyes and not merely his own. One

way or another, a current of communications seemed to be always

circling round the little table where the man sat smoking a

cigarette and sipping black coffee and benedictine. At the moment

when Pond first saw him, a group of young men was breaking up after

some tangle of talk and laughter; they seemed to have stopped by

the table merely for the sake of the talk. The next moment a

string of gutter-children invaded his solitude and received the

pieces of sugar not used for his coffee; then a hulking and rather

sulky-looking labourer came up and talked to him, for a much longer

time than any of the others. Strangest of all, a lady, of the

stiff aristocratic sort seldom seen outside the house in such

countries, actually got out of a carriage and stood staring at the

strange gentleman; and then got into the carriage again. These

things alone might have led Pond to look at the person in question;

but in fact, for some reason or other, he had looked at him with

great curiosity from the first.

The man wore a wide white hat and a rather shabby dark blue suit;

he had a high-bridged nose and a pale yellow beard brushed to a

point. He had long, bony, but elegant, hands, on one of which was

a ring with a stone coloured like a kingfisher, the only spot of

luxury on what was otherwise a rather threadbare appearance; and in

the grey shadow of the white hat his eyes shone as blue as the

stone. There was nothing in his position that claimed prominence;

he did not sit in the front but up against the wall of the café,

just under a creeper and a fire-escape. Despite the little crowds

that clustered round him, he had in the intervals an odd air of

preferring to be alone. Pond made many inquiries, then and

afterwards, about his name; but learnt nothing except that he was

commonly called M. Louis; but whether that was his real surname, or

perhaps the adaptation of some foreign surname, or whether his

queer and eccentric popularity led everybody to use his Christian

name, did not very clearly emerge.

“Marcus,” said Mr. Pond to his young companion, “who IS this man?”

“Everybody knows him and nobody knows who he is,” replied Marcus in

a rather grating voice. “But I’m jolly well going to find out.”

As he spoke, the hawkers of the revolutionary paper, published by

the strikers and conspicuous by being printed on vivid scarlet

paper, were distributing it among a considerable number of

purchasers in the crowd outside the café; a black block thus

rapidly diversified with blots of blood-red colour. Some, indeed,

looked at the paper only to jeer at it; some with a colder

curiosity; perhaps only a few with the respect of real sympathizers.

Among those reading it with detachment, but not apparently with

definite disapproval, was the gentleman with the beard and the blue

ring: M. Louis.

“Well,” said Marcus, with a darkening brow. “Let them. It’s their

last chance, I suppose.”

“Why, what do you mean?” inquired Pond.

The brow of Marcus became still more corrugated and troubled; at

length he said in a gruff and rather reluctant manner: “I’m bound

to say I don’t approve of it myself. I can’t see how the Republic

can reconcile it with its liberal principles to suppress

newspapers. But they’re going to suppress that newspaper. They’ve

been a good deal goaded. I don’t believe the Prime Minister

himself really likes the suppression; but the Minister of the

Interior is a fiery little devil and generally gets his own way.

Anyhow, they’re going to raid the offices with police to-morrow;

and that’s probably the last issue.”

M. Marcus proved himself a true prophet, so far as concerned the

general situation next morning.

There had apparently been another issue; but if it had ever been

displayed it had not been successfully distributed; the police had

seized all copies of it everywhere; and the black-clad bourgeoisie

sitting outside the café were now blameless and unspotted with any

hues of blood; save in one corner under the fire-escape and the

creeper, where M. Louis was reading his copy of the sanguinary

sheet in complete indifference to the change. Some of those around

him eyed him slightly askance; and Pond specially noticed Mr. Huss,

the bookseller, complete with black top-hat and white whiskers,

seated at a table close by and eyeing the reader of the red paper

with bristling suspicion.

Marcus and Pond took their seats at their own original table; and

even as they did so, a contingent of police came by, marching very

rapidly, cleaning up the streets. There marched with them, with

yet more furious rapidity, a squat, square man with arrogant

moustaches, wearing an official decoration and flourishing an

umbrella like a sabre. This was the eminent and highly militant

Dr. Koch, the Minister of the Interior; he had been presiding over

the police raid, and his rolling eye instantly spotted the one red

spot in the corner of the crowded café. He planted himself before

M. Louis; and shouted as if on parade:

“You are forbidden to read that paper. It contains direct

incitement to crime.”

“And how,” asked M. Louis courteously, “and how can I discover this

deplorable fact except by reading it?”

Something in that polite tone seemed, for some odd reason, to cause

the Minister of the Interior to fly, as the phrase goes, right off

the handle. Pointing his umbrella at the man in the café, he

vociferated with a violent distinctness:

“You could be arrested, you could be deported; and you know why.

Not for all that bloody nonsense. You don’t need that scrap of a

scarlet rag to mark you out among decent citizens.”

“Because my own sins are as scarlet,” said the other, gently

inclining his head, “the scandal of my presence here is indeed

highly scandalous. And why don’t you arrest me?”

“You wait and see whether we arrest you,” said the Minister

grinding his teeth. “Anyhow, you shan’t arrest us or hold up the

whole machinery of society by a trick like this. Do you think we

will let that sort of dirty little red rusty nail in the road stop

all the wheels of progress?”

“And do you think,” answered the other sternly, “that all the

wheels of your sort of progress have ever done anything yet but

grind the faces of the poor? No; I have not the honour of being

one of the citizens of your State; one of those happy, joyful, well-

fed, wealthy citizens one sees standing about in the street, on

whom you wage war by hunger. But I am not a subject of any foreign

State; and you will have quite a peculiar difficulty in deporting

me back to my own country.”

The Minister took one furious step forward; and then stopped. Then

he walked off twirling his moustaches, as if suddenly forgetting

the very existence of the other; and followed in the track of the

police.

“There seem to be a number of mysteries here,” said Mr. Pond to his

friend. “First, why should he be deported? Second, why shouldn’t

he be deported?”

“I don’t know,” said Marcus, and stood up stiff and frowning.

“All the same,” said Mr. Pond, “I am beginning to have a sort of

fancy about who he is.”

“Yes,” said Marcus grimly, “and I’m beginning to have a fancy about

what he is. Not a nice fancy.” And he strode abruptly away from

the table and up the street alone.

Mr. Pond remained seated in a condition of profound thought. After

some minutes he rose and made his way towards the table where his

friend the bookseller, the excellent Huss, was still seated in

somewhat darkling majesty.

Even as he crossed the crowded trottoir, a roar broke from the

street behind him, which was filling with twilight; and he realized

that the great grey crowd of the strikers was on the march past,

following the same route as the police who had just cleared out

their offices. But the cause of the cry was more particular and

even personal. The sardonic eyes of the semi-starving mob had

swept the whole dark and decorous crowd of respectable people

outside the café, and marked the absence of their proscribed paper;

then they had suddenly perceived the familiar red flare of its

fluttering pages in the hands of M. Louis, who was continuing to

read it with unaltered calm. All the strikers stood still, halting

and saluting like an army; and a great shout, seeming to shake the

lamp-posts and little trees, went up for the one man who remained

faithful to the red rag. M. Louis rose and gravely bowed to the

applauding mob. Mr. Pond sat down opposite his friend the

bookseller and scrutinized his whiskered face with interest.

“Well,” said Mr. Pond, “our friend over there looks as if he might

soon be the leader of the revolutionary party.”

This remark had a rather strange effect on Mr. Huss; he started as

in disorder by saying: “No, no”; controlled his countenance, and

then enunciated a number of short sentences with an extraordinary

exactitude.

“Myself of the bourgeoisie, I have yet remained apart from

politics. I have taken no part in any class-war proceeding under

present conditions. I have no reason to identify myself either

with the protest of the proletariat or with the present phase of

capitalism.”

“Oh,” said Mr. Pond; and an understanding began to dawn in his

eyes. After a moment he said: “I apologize most sincerely, old

man. I didn’t know you were a Communist.”

“I have confessed to nothing of the sort,” said Huss heatedly; then

he added abruptly: “You will say somebody has betrayed me.”

“Your speech betrays you, like the Galilean,” said Pond. “Every

sect talks its own language. You could tell a man was a Buddhist

from his way of saying he was not a Buddhist. It’s no business of

mine; and I won’t mention it to a soul, if you prefer not. I only

ventured to say that the man over there seems to be very popular

with the strikers, and might lead the movement.”

“No, no, no,” cried Huss, beating on the table with his two fists.

“Never, never, shall he lead the movement! Understand me! We are

a scientific movement. We are not moral. We have done with

bourgeois ideologies of right and wrong. We are Realpolilik. What

helps the program of Marx is alone good. What hinders the program

of Marx is alone evil. But there are limits. There are names so

infamous, there are persons so infamous, that they must always be

excluded from the Party.”

“You mean somebody is so wicked that he has awakened a dormant

moral sense even in a Bolshevist bookseller,” said Pond. “Why,

what has he done?”

“It is not only what he does but what he is,” said Mr. Huss.

“Curious that you should say that,” said Pond. “For I have just

made a sort of a guess about what he is.”

He took a newspaper-cutting from his waistcoat pocket and pushed it

across to the other, remarking casually: “You will note that

Tarnowski the Terrorist is now said to be fomenting strikes and

revolutions not only in this country but definitely in this

capital. Well, our friend in the white hat seems to me to be

rather an old hand.”

Huss was still drumming faintly on the table and obscurely

muttering: “Never, never, shall he be the leader.”

“But suppose he is the leader?” said Pond. “He obviously has a

sort of habit of old leadership about him; a sort of gesture of

authority. Isn’t he going on exactly as Tarnowski the Tiger

probably would go on?”

Mr. Pond may have expected to surprise the bookseller; but it was

Mr. Pond who got the surprise. The effect on the bookseller was

such that surprise would be a comically inadequate description.

Mr. Huss stiffened and sat as still as a stone idol; but the change

in the face of the graven image was appalling. It suggested some

nightmare story of a man at a solitary table finding he was dining

with a devil.

“My God,” said the atheist at last, in a small, weak rather squeaky

voice, “and so you think HE is Tarnowski!” And with that, the

bookseller in the top-hat suddenly went off into hoots of hollow

laughter, like the dismal noises of an owl, shrill and monotonous

and apparently to be repeated indefinitely without control.

“Well,” interrupted Pond, mildly exasperated, “how can you possibly

know that he is not Tarnowski?”

“Only because I am Tarnowski,” said the bookseller, with sudden

sobriety. “You say you are not a spy. But you can betray me if

you choose.”

“I assure Your Excellency,” said Mr. Pond, “that I am not a spy or

even, what is worse, a gossip. I am only a tourist who is not

talkative and a traveller who tells no traveller’s tales. Besides,

I owe a debt to Your Excellency, for having illuminated my mind

with an important principle. I never saw it so clearly before. A

man always says exactly what he means; but especially when he hides

it.”

“That,” observed the other with guttural slowness, “is what I think

you call a paradox.”

“Oh, don’t say that,” groaned Mr. Pond. “Everybody in England says

that. And I have honestly no notion of what it means.”

“But in that case,” said Mr. Pond to himself, “who on earth IS the

man in the white hat? What crime has he committed? What crime is

it for which he can be arrested or deported? Or again, what crime

is it for which he CAN’T be arrested or deported?”

It was in a burst of splendid sunshine, on the following morning,

that Pond sat at his little table in the café ruminating on the

renewed difficulties of the problem. The sun gave a sort of golden

gaiety to a scene that had lately looked rather sombre, and even

black, bloodshot with the glimpses of the Bolshevist journal. In

the social sense at least, there seemed to be a clearance in the

storm, of the strikers if not the strike; the threat of riots had

been outmanoeuvred; and the police were picketed at intervals down

the street; but seemed in the tranquil sunshine as harmless as the

toy trees and the painted lamp-posts. Mr. Pond felt an irrational

return of that vague exhilaration which an Englishman sometimes

feels in the mere fact of being abroad; the smell of the French

coffee affected him as some are affected by the smell of hayfields

or the sea. M. Louis had resumed his amiable hobby of distributing

sugar to the gamins; and the very shape of those oblong blocks of

beetroot-sugar pleased Mr. Pond in the same manner. He had a hazy

feeling that he was looking at the scene through the eyes of one of

the children. Even the gendarmes posted along the pavement amused

him in a merely nonsensical manner, as if they had been dolls or

dummies in some delightful puppet-play; their cocked hats carrying

a vague memory of the beadle in a Punch-and-Judy show. Through all

this coloured comedy there advanced the rigid figure of M. Marcus,

with a visage which announced vividly that that political Puritan

did not believe in puppet-shows.

“Well,” he said, glaring at Pond with a sort of controlled rage, “I

fancy I can guess the truth about HIM.”

Pond made polite inquiries; and was answered by an unexpectedly

ugly and jeering laugh.

“What sort of man is it,” asked Marcus, “who is received everywhere

with bows and smiles? Who is it to whom everybody is always so

courteous and complimentary? What generous Friend of the People?

What holy Father of the Poor? Deported! That sort of fellow ought

to be hanged.”

“I fear I do not understand anything yet,” answered Pond mildly,

“except that for some reason he cannot even be deported.”

“Looks very patriarchal, doesn’t he, sitting in the sunshine and

playing with the children? It was darker last night and I caught

him in a darker piece of business… . Listen to this, first of

all. It was at the end of dusk, yesterday evening; and but for

myself, he was alone in the café; I don’t think he saw me; but I

don’t know if he would care. There drove up a dark, closely

curtained carriage; and that lady we saw once before got out; a

very grand lady, I am sure, though I fancy not so rich as she had

been. She had an interview with this man, in which she actually

went on her knees to him on the muddy pavement, begging him for

something; and he only sat there and smiled. What sort of a man is

it who sees ladies grovelling before him and only grins like a

demon and doesn’t even take off his hat? What sort of man is it

who can play the Sultan in society and be sure that everybody will

smile and be polite? Only the very basest sort of criminal.”

“In plain words,” said Mr. Pond, “you mean he ought to be arrested

because he’s a blackmailer. You also mean he can’t be arrested

because he’s a blackmailer.”

For the first time the rage of Marcus seemed mixed with a sort of

embarrassment, almost amounting to shame, as he looked down

scowling at the table.

“It has no doubt occurred to you,” proceeded Pond placidly, “that

the second inference involves some suggestions that are rather

delicate; especially if I may say so, for a man in your position.”

Marcus remained in a silence swollen with anger; then at last he

broke out abruptly, as if beyond control: “I’ll swear the Prime

Minister is perfectly honest.”

“I do not think,” said Mr. Pond, “that I have ever regaled you with

any scandals about the Prime Minister.”

“And I can’t believe the little doctor is really in it,” went on

Marcus savagely. “I’ve always thought it was just sincerity that

made him spluttering and spiteful. It was just trying to be

straight amid all this—”

“All this what?” asked Mr. Pond.

Marcus turned in his chair with an abrupt gesture of the elbow,

saying: “Oh, you don’t understand.”

“On the contrary,” replied Pond. “I think I do understand.”

There was a lengthy silence and then Pond resumed:

“I understand the horrid truth that you yourself are a perfectly

honourable and high-minded person and that your own problem is

extremely difficult to solve. I assure you that I am quite

incapable of taunting you with it. It was to the Republic, to the

idea of equality and justice, that you swore loyalty; and to that

you have been loyal.”

“You had better say what you think.” said Marcus gloomily. “You

mean that I am really only serving a gang of crooks, whom any

blackguard can blackmail.”

“No, I will not ask you to admit that now,” answered Pond. “Just

now I wanted to ask you quite another question. Can’t you imagine

a man sympathizing with the strikers, or even being a sincere

Socialist?”

“Well,” replied Marcus, after a spasm of concentration, “I suppose

one ought to imagine. I suppose he might hold that, the Republic

resting on the Social Contract, it might supersede even free

contracts.”

“Thank you,” said Mr. Pond with satisfaction, “that is exactly what

I wanted. It is an important contribution to Pond’s Law of

Paradox, if I may be pardoned for expressing myself so playfully.

And now let us go and talk to M. Louis.”

He stood up before the astonished official, who had no apparent

alternative but to follow him as he passed swiftly across the café.

Some vivacious and talkative young men were taking leave of M.

Louis, who courteously invited the newcomers to the empty chairs,

saying something about “my young friends often enliven my solitude

with their rather Socialistic views.”

“I should not agree with your young friends,” said Marcus curtly,

“I am so old-fashioned as to believe in free contract.”

“I, being older, perhaps believe in it even more,” answered M.

Louis smiling. “But surely it is a very old principle of law that

a leonine contract is not a free contract. And it is hypocrisy to

pretend that a bargain between a starving man and a man with all

the food is anything but a leonine contract.” He glanced up at the

fire-escape, a ladder leading up to the balcony of a very high

attic above. “I live in that garret; or rather on that balcony.

If I fell off the balcony and hung on a spike, so far from the

steps that somebody with a ladder could offer to rescue me if I

gave him a hundred million francs, I should be quite morally

justified in using his ladder and then telling him to go to hell

for his hundred million. Hell, indeed, is not out of the picture;

for it is a sin of injustice to force an advantage against the

desperate. Well, all those poor men are desperate; they all hang

starving on spikes. If they must not bargain collectively, they

cannot bargain at all. You are not supporting contract; you are

opposing all contract; for yours cannot be a real contract at all.”

While the smoke of his cigarette mounted towards the balcony, Mr.

Pond’s eye followed it and found the balcony fitted out with what

looked like a bedstead, a screen, and an old looking-glass, all

very shabby. The only other object was a dusty old cross-hilted

sword, such as might have come from a curiosity shop. Mr. Pond

eyed this last object with considerable curiosity.

“Please permit me to play the host,” said M. Louis affably.

“Perhaps you would like a cocktail or something; I stick to a

little benedictine.”

As he turned in his chair towards the waiter, a shot rang through

the café and the little glass before him lay in a star of

splinters. The bullet that spilt the drink had missed the drinker

by half a yard. Marcus looked wildly round; the café was deserted,

for it was already late; no figure was in sight but the solid back

of the gendarme standing outside. But Marcus went white with

horror; for M. Louis made one quaint little gesture which, if it

meant anything, could only mean that the policeman himself had

turned for an instant and fired.

“A little reminder, perhaps, that it is time to go to bed,” said M.

Louis gaily. “I go up by the fire-escape and I sleep on the

balcony. Doctors think so much of this open-air treatment. Well,

my people have always gone to bed in public; so many tramps do,

don’t they? Good night, gentlemen.”

He lightly scaled the iron ladder and began on the balcony, before

their astonished eyes, to assume a capacious dressing-gown and

prepare for slumber.

“Pond,” said Marcus, “we are in a nightmare of nonsense.”

“No,” replied Pond, “for the first lime it begins to make sense. I

have been stupid; but I am beginning at last to see what it all

means.” After ruminating a moment, he resumed rather apologetically:

“Forgive me if I refer again to my foolish jest about Pond’s Law.

I think I have discovered a rather useful principle. It is this.

Men may argue FOR principles not entirely their own, for various

reasons; as a joke in a rag debate, or covered by professional

etiquette, like a barrister, or merely exaggerating something

neglected and needing emphasis; long before we come to those who do

it hypocritically or for hire. A man can argue FOR principles not

his own. But a man cannot argue FROM principles not his own; the

first principles he assumes, even for sophistry or advocacy, will

probably be his own fundamental first principles. The very

language he uses will betray him. That Bolshevist bookseller

professed to be a bourgeois; but he talked like a Bolshevist about

a bourgeois. He talked about exploitation and the class-war. So

you tried to imagine yourself a Socialist; but you did not talk

like a Socialist. You talked about the Social Contract, like old

Rousseau. Now our friend M. Louis was defending his sympathy with

strikers and even Socialists. But he used the oldest and most

traditional argument of all, older than the Roman Law. The idea

about leonine contract is as old as Leo and a long sight older than

Leo XIII. Therefore, he represents something even older than your

Rousseau and your Revolution. I knew after five words that he was

not the blackmailing blackguard of romance; and yet he is romantic.

And he could be legally arrested; but only for a rather curious

crime. And yet again, he cannot be arrested. He can only be

assassinated.

“The blackmail charge rests on one scene, in which a lady knelt to

him in the street. You argued truly that ladies in your country

think so much of formality and propriety, that they could never do

this except in some extreme of agony and despair. It did not occur

to you that, perhaps, it might be only an extreme of formality and

propriety.”

Marcus began slowly: “What the devil—” And then Mr. Pond rapped

out quite smartly: “And then the sword. What is a sword FOR?

It’s absurd to say for fighting; he wouldn’t wave a mediæval sword

against people shooting him with guns. If it were for duels he

would have a duelling-sword; and probably two in a case. What else

can you do with a sword? Well, you can swallow it; and at one time

I really had a fancy he might be a conjurer. But it’s too big a

swallow; so is the notion. What CAN be done with a sword, but not

with a spear or gun or battle-axe? Have you heard of the Accolade?

Long ago a man could be knighted by any knight; but by all modern

custom it can only be done—”

“Only—” began Marcus, beginning to stare.

“Only by a King,” said Pond. And the young Republican sprang up

rigid at the challenge.

“Yes,” continued Pond, “the King has crept back among you. It is

not your fault. Republics might be all right if Republicans were

as honourable as you are; but you have confessed that they are

not … and that’s what he meant about going to bed in public.

You know the old kings really did. But he had another reason. He

had one real fear; that they might deport him secretly. They could

deport him technically, of course; all these Republics have laws

against Royalist claimants remaining in the realm. But if they did

it publicly, he would proclaim himself and—”

“Why don’t they do it publicly?” asked the Republican explosively.

“Politicians do not understand much; but politicians do understand

politics,” said Pond pensively. “I mean they do understand the

IMMEDIATE effect on mobs and movements. Somehow he had slipped in

and started a campaign of private popularity before they even knew

who he was. When once he was popular, they were helpless. How

could they say: ‘Yes, he is popular, he is on the side of the

people and the poor; the young men accept his leadership; but he is

the King and therefore he must go’? They know how horribly near

the world is to answering: ‘Yes; he is the King and, by God, he

shall stay.’”

Mr. Pond had told this story, at somewhat greater length but in far

more classic diction; and by that time had actually finished the

oysters. He gazed pensively at the shells and added: “You will of

course recall the meaning of the word ostracism. It meant that in

ancient Athens a man was sometimes exiled merely for being

important; and the votes were recorded by oyster-shells. In this

case he should have been exiled for being important; but he was so

very important that nobody could be told of his importance.”

RING OF LOVERS

“As I said before,” observed Mr. Pond, towards the end of one of

his lucid but rather lengthy speeches, “our friend Gahagan here is

a very truthful man and tells wanton and unnecessary lies. But

this very truthfulness—”

Captain Gahagan waved a gloved hand as in courteous acknowledgement

of anything anybody liked to say; he had an especially flamboyant

flower in his coat and looked unusually gay. But Sir Hubert

Wotton, the third party at the little conference, sat up. For he

followed the flow of words with tireless, intelligent attention,

while Gahagan, though radiant, seemed rather abstracted; and these

abrupt absurdities always brought Sir Hubert up standing.

“Say that again,” he said, not without sarcasm.

“Surely that is obvious enough,” pleaded Mr. Pond. “A real liar

does not tell wanton and unnecessary lies. He tells wise and

necessary lies. It was not necessary for Gahagan to tell us once

that he had seen not one sea-serpent but six sea-serpents, each

larger than the last; still less to inform us that each reptile in

turn swallowed the last one whole; and that the last of all was

opening its mouth to swallow the ship, when he saw it was only a

yawn after too heavy a meal, and the monster suddenly went to

sleep. I will not dwell on the mathematical symmetry with which

snake within snake yawned, and snake within snake went to sleep,

all except the smallest, which had had no dinner and walked out to

look for some. It was not, I say, necessary for Gahagan to tell

this story. It was hardly even wise. It is very unlikely that it

would promote his worldly prospects, or gain him any rewards or

decorations for scientific research. The official scientific

world, I know not why, is prejudiced against any story even of one

sea-serpent, and would be the less likely to accept the narrative

in its present form.

“Or again, when Captain Gahagan told us he had been a Broad

Church missionary, and had readily preached in the pulpits of

Nonconformists, then in the mosques of Moslems, then in the

monasteries of Tibet, but was most warmly welcomed by a mystical

sect of Theists in those parts, people in a state of supreme

spiritual exaltation who worshipped him like a god, until he found

they were enthusiasts for Human Sacrifice and he was the victim.

This statement was also quite unnecessary. To have been a

latitudinarian clergyman is but little likely to advance him in his

present profession, or to fit him for his present pursuits. I

suspect the story was partially a parable or allegory. But anyhow,

it was quite unnecessary and it was obviously untrue. And when a

thing is obviously untrue, it is obviously not a lie.”

“Suppose,” said Gahagan abruptly, “suppose I were to tell you a

story that really is true?”

“I should regard it with great suspicion,” said Wotton grimly.

“You mean you would think I was still romancing. But why?”

“Because it would be so very like a romance,” retorted Wotton.

“But don’t you think,” asked the Captain thoughtfully, “that real

life sometimes is like a romance?”

“I think,” replied Wotton, with a certain genuine shrewdness that

lay very deep in him, “that I could always really tell the

difference.”

“You are right,” said Pond; “and it seems to me the difference is

this. Life is artistic in parts, but not as a whole; it’s like

broken bits of different works of art. When everything hangs

together, and it all fits in, we doubt. I might even believe that

Gahagan saw six sea-serpents; but not that each was larger than the

last. If he’d said there was first a large one and then a little

one and then a larger one, he might have taken us in. We often say

that one social situation is like being in a novel; but it doesn’t

finish like the novel—at least, not the same novel.”

“Pond,” said Gahagan, “I sometimes think you are inspired, or

possessed of a devil in a quiet way. It’s queer you should say

that; because my experience was just like that. With this

difference; each familiar melodrama broke off; but only turned to

blacker melodrama—or tragedy. Again and again, in this affair, I

thought I was in a magazine story; and then it turned to quite

another story. Sort of dissolving view, or a nightmare.

Especially a nightmare.”

“And why especially?” asked Wotton.

“It’s a horrible story,” said Gahagan, lowering his voice. “But

it’s not so horrible now.”

“Of course,” said Mr. Pond, nodding. “You are happy and wish to

tell us a horrible story.”

“And what does THAT mean?” demanded Wotton.

“It means,” said Gahagan, “that I got engaged to be married this

morning.”

“The devil you—I beg your pardon,” said Wotton, very red in the

face. “Congratulations, of course, and all that. But what has it

to do with the nightmare?”

“There is a connexion,” said Gahagan dreamily. “But you want the

horrible story and not the happy one. Well, it was a bit of a

mystery, at least to me; but I understood it at last.”

“And when you’ve done mystifying us, you will tell us the

solution?”

“No; Pond will tell you the solution,” said Gahagan maliciously.

“He’s already puffed up because he guessed the kind of story,

before he even heard it. If he can’t finish the story, when he has

heard it—”

He broke off and then resumed more solidly:

“It began with a dinner-party, what they call a stag-party, given

by Lord Crome, following on a cocktail-party mostly given by Lady

Crome. Lady Crome was a tall and swift and graceful person with a

small dark head. Lord Crome was quite the reverse; he was in every

way, physical and mental, a ‘long-headed’ person. You’ve heard of

a hatchet-face; his was a hatchet that cut off his own head—or

rather his own body, abolishing the slighter and more insignificant

figure. He is an economist and he gave one the impression of being

distrait and rather bored with all the ladies who swam about in the

wake of his wonderful wife, that darting swan; and perhaps that was

why he wanted the cooler society of his own sex. Anyhow, he kept

some of his male guests for a little dinner after the at-home was

over. I happened to be one of them; but, in spite of that, it was

a select company.

“It was a select company; and yet it hardly seemed to have been

selected. They were mostly well-known men, and yet it looked as if

Crome had taken their names out of a hat. The first person I ran

into was Captain Blande, supposed to be one of the biggest officers

in the British Army, and I should think the stupidest, for any

strategic purposes. Of course he looks magnificent—like a

chryselephantine statue of Hercules, and about as useful in time of

war. I once used the word ‘chryselephantine,’ meaning gold and

ivory; and he thought I was calling him elephantine. Classical

education of the pukka sahib. Well, the man he was put next to was

Count Kranz, the Hungarian scientist and social reformer. He

speaks twenty-seven languages, including philosophical language. I

wonder what language he talked to Captain Blande in. Just beyond

the Count was another fellow more of Blande’s sort; but darker and

leaner and livelier; a fellow called Wooster of some Bengal

regiment. His language also would be limited: the Latin verb polo,

polas, polat; I play polo, thou playest polo, he plays polo, or

(more devastatingly) he does not play polo. But just as polo

itself was an Asiatic game, and can be traced through the gilded

jungle of Persian and Indian illuminations, so there was something

faintly Eurasian about this man Wooster; he was like a dark-striped

tiger and one could fancy him gliding through a jungle. That pair

at least looked a little more well-matched; for Kranz also was dark

and good-looking, with arched, black, Assyrian eyebrows and a long,

dark beard, spreading like a fan or the forked tail of a bird. I

sat next, and got on with Wooster pretty well; on the other side of

me was Sir Oscar Marvell, the great actor-manager, all very fine

and large, with the Olympian curls and the Roman nose. Here also

there was some lack of rapport. Sir Oscar Marvell didn’t want to

talk about anything but Sir Oscar Marvell; and the other men didn’t

want to talk about Sir Oscar Marvell at all. The three remaining

men were the new Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Pitt-Palmer,

a very frigid-looking young man like the bust of Augustus Cæsar—

and indeed HE was classical enough, and could have quoted the

classics all right; one Italian singer, whose name I could not

remember, and one Polish diplomat, whose name nobody could

remember. And I was saying to myself all the time: ‘What a funny

collection!’”

“I know this story,” said Wotton positively. “A humorous host

collects a lot of incompatible people for the pleasure of hearing

them quarrel. Done very well in one of Anthony Berkeley’s

detective stories.”

“No,” replied Gahagan. “I think their incompatibility was quite

accidental, and I know that Crome didn’t use it to make them

quarrel. As a matter of fact, he was a most tactful host, and it

would be truer to say he prevented them from quarrelling. He did

it rather cleverly, too, by beginning to talk about heirlooms and

family jewels and so on. Different as they were, most of them were

well-off, and what is called of a good family; and it was about as

close to common ground as they could get. The Pole, who was a

baldish but graceful person, with very charming manners, and much

the wittiest man at table, was giving an amusing account of the

adventures of a medal of Sobieski when it fell into the hands first

of a Jew, and then of a Prussian, and then of a Cossack. In

contrast to the Pole, who was hairless and talkative, the Italian

beyond him was silent, and rather sulky, under his bush of black

hair.

“‘That’s an interesting-looking ring you are wearing yourself, Lord

Crome,’ said the Pole politely. ‘Those heavy rings are generally

historic. I think I should really like to wear an episcopal ring

or, better still, a Papal ring. But then there are all those

tiresome preliminaries about being made Pope; it involves celibacy;

and I—’ And he shrugged his shoulders.

“‘Very annoying, no doubt,’ said Lord Crome, smiling at him grimly.

‘As for this ring here—well, it is rather interesting in a way, in

that sort of family way, of course. I don’t know the details, but

it is obviously sixteenth century. Care to look at it?’ And he

slipped off his finger a heavy ring with a red stone and passed it

to the Pole, who was silting next to him. It proved on examination

to be set with a cluster of extremely fine rubies and carved with a

central device of a heart inside a rose. I saw it myself, since it

was handed round the table; and there was some lettering in old

French which meant something like ‘From the lover only and only to

the beloved.’

“‘A romance in your family history, I suppose?’ suggested the

Hungarian Count. ‘And about the sixteenth century. But you do not

know the story?”

“‘No,’ said Crome, ‘but I suppose it was, as you say, a romance in

the family.’

“They began talking about sixteenth-century romances, at some

length; and at last Crome asked very courteously if everybody had

seen the ring.”

“Oh,” cried Wotton, with a deep breath, rather like a schoolboy at

a conjurer’s performance. “I know THIS story, anyhow. This is a

magazine story, if you like! The ring wasn’t returned and

everybody was searched or somebody refused to be searched; and

there was some awfully romantic reason for his refusing to be

searched.”

“You are right,” said Gahagan. “Right, up to a point. The ring

was not returned. We were all searched. We all insisted on being

searched. Nobody refused to be searched. But the ring was gone.”

Gahagan turned rather restlessly and threw an elbow over the back

of his chair; after a moment he went on:

“Please don’t imagine I didn’t feel all you say; that we seemed to

have got inside a novel; and not a very novel sort of novel. But

the difference was exactly what Pond says: that the novel didn’t

finish properly, but seemed to go on to something else. We had

just reached about the coffee stage of the dinner, while this fuss

about the first discovery of the loss was being discussed. But all

the nonsense about searching was really very swift and simple; and

the coffee hadn’t even got cold in the interlude, though Crome

offered to send for some more. We all said that of course it

didn’t matter; but Crome summoned the butler who’d been handing it

round; and they whispered together in what was obviously a rather

agitated conversation. Then, just as Pitt-Palmer was lifting his

coffee cup to his lips, Lord Crome sprang up stiff and bristling

and called out like the crack of a whip:

“‘Gentlemen, do not touch this coffee. It is poisoned.’”

“But dash it all,” interrupted Wotton, “that’s a different story!

I say, Gahagan, are you sure you didn’t dream all this? After

reading through a stack of out-of-date magazines and mixing up all

the results? Of course we know the story about a whole company

laid out with poison—”

“The results in this case were rather more extraordinary,” said

Gahagan calmly. “Most of us naturally sat like stone statues under

such a thunder-bolt of a threat. But young Pitt-Palmer, with his

cold, clean-cut, classical face, rose to his feet with the coffee

cup in his hand and said in the coolest way:

“‘Awfully sorry; but I do hate letting my coffee get cold.’

“And he drained his cup; and, as God sees me, his face turned black

or a blend of dreadful colours; and after horrible and inhuman

noises, he fell down as in a fit before our eyes.

“Of course, we were not certain at first. But the Hungarian

scientist had a doctor’s degree; and what he reported was confirmed

by the local doctor, who was sent for at once. There was no doubt

that he was dead.”

“You mean,” said Wotton, “that the doctors agreed that he was

poisoned?”

Gahagan shook his head and repeated: “I said they agreed that he

was dead.”

“But why should he be dead unless he was poisoned?”

“He was choked,” said Gahagan; and for one instant a shudder caught

his whole powerful frame.

After a silence that seemed suddenly imposed by his agitation,

Wotton said at last:

“I don’t understand a word you say. Who poisoned the coffee?”

“Nobody poisoned the coffee; because it wasn’t poisoned,” answered

Gahagan. “The only reason for saying that was to make sure the

coffee should remain in the cup, to be analysed just as it was.

Poor Pitt-Palmer had put in a very large lump of sugar just before;

but the sugar would melt. Some things do not melt.”

Sir Hubert Wotton stared for some seconds into vacancy; and then

his eyes began to glow with his own very real though not very rapid

intelligence.

“You mean,” he said, “that Pitt-Palmer somehow dropped the ring

into the black coffee, where it wouldn’t be seen, before he was

searched. In other words, Pitt-Palmer was the thief?”

“Pitt-Palmer is dead,” said Gahagan very gravely, “and it is the

more my duty to defend his memory. What he did was doubtless

wrong, as I have come to see more clearly than I did; but not worse

than many a man has done. You may say what you like about that

very common sort of wrong-doing. But he was not a thief.”

“Will you or will you not explain what all this means?” cried

Wotton with abrupt annoyance.

“No,” replied Gahagan, with a sudden air of relapsing into laziness

and fatigue. “Mr. Pond will now oblige.”

“Pond wasn’t there, was he?” asked Wotton sharply.

“Oh, no,” answered Gahagan, rather with the air of one about to go

to sleep. “But I can see by his eyebrows that he knows all about

it. Besides, it’s somebody else’s turn.”

He closed his eyes with so hopeless a placidity that the baffled

Wotton was forced to turn on the third party, rather like a

bewildered bull.

“Do you really know anything about this?” he demanded. “What does

he mean by saying that the man who hid the ring wasn’t a thief?”

“Well, perhaps I can guess a little,” said Mr. Pond modestly. “But

that’s only because I’ve kept in mind what we said at the beginning—

about the misleading way in which things remind us of romantic

things; only they are never rounded off like the romance. You see,

the trouble is that, when a real event reminds us of a novel, we

unconsciously think we know all about it, because we know all about

the novel. We have got into a groove or rut of familiar fiction;

and we can’t help thinking the groove runs forward and backward as

it does in fiction. We’ve got the whole background of the story at

the back of our minds; and we can’t believe that we’re really in

another story. We always assume something that is assumed in the

fictional story; and it isn’t true. Once assume the wrong

beginning, and you’ll not only give the wrong answer but you ask

the wrong question. In this case, you’ve got a mystery; but you’ve

got hold of the wrong mystery.”

“Gahagan said you would explain everything,” said Wotton, with

controlled satire. “May I ask if this is the explanation? Is this

the solution or the mystery?”

“The real mystery of the ring,” said Pond gravely, “is not where it

went to, but where it came from.”

Wotton stared at him steadily for an instant, and then said in

rather a new voice: “Go on.”

Mr. Pond went on. “Gahagan has said very truly that poor Pitt-

Palmer was not the thief. Pitt-Palmer did not steal the ring.”

“Then,” exploded Wotton, “who the devil was it who stole the ring?”

“Lord Crome stole the ring,” said Mr. Pond.

There was a silence upon the whole group for a brief space; and

then the somnolent Gahagan stirred and said: “I knew you would see

the point.”

By way of making things clearer, Mr. Pond added almost

apologetically:

“But, you see, he had to hand it round, to find out whom he had

stolen it from.”

After a moment he resumed in his usual logical but laborious

manner: “Don’t you see, as I said, you assume something at the

start, simply because it is in all the stories? You assume that

when a host hands round something at dinner, it’s something

belonging to him and his household, probably an old family

possession; because that is in all the stories. But Lord Crome

meant something much blacker and bitterer than that when he said,

with a dreadful irony, that it commemorated a romance in his

family.

“Lord Crome had stolen that ring by intercepting correspondence;

or, in other words, tearing open an envelope addressed to his wife

and containing nothing but the ring. The address was typewritten;

nor indeed did he know all the handwritings involved. But he knew

the very ancient writing engraved on that ring; which was such that

it could only have been given with one purpose. He assembled those

men to find out who was the sender; or, in other words, who was the

owner. He knew the owner would somehow attempt to reclaim his

possession, if he possibly could; to stop the scandal and remove

the evidence. And indeed the man who did so, though he might be a

blackguard, would certainly not be a thief. As a matter of fact,

after a heathen fashion, he was a bit of a hero. Perhaps it was

not for nothing that he had that cold, strong face that is the

stone mask of Augustus. He took, first of all, the simple but

sensible course of slipping the ring into his black coffee, under

cover of a gesture of taking sugar. There it would not be seen,

for the moment, anyhow; and he could safely offer himself to be

searched. That demented moment, which really seemed to turn the

whole thing into a frightful dream, when Crome screamed out that

the coffee was poisoned, was only Crome’s desperate counterstroke

when he had guessed the trick; to make sure that the coffee should

be left alone and the ring recovered. But that young man with the

cold face preferred to die in that dreadful fashion: by swallowing

the heavy ring and choking; on the chance that his secret, or

rather Lady Crome’s secret, might yet be overlooked. It was a

desperate chance, anyway; but of all the courses open to him, that

being his object, it was probably the best he could have taken. In

any case, I feel that we must all support Gahagan in saying, very

properly, that the poor fellow’s memory should be protected from

any baser suggestions, and that a gentleman is certainly not a

robber when he prefers to choke himself with his own ring.”

Mr. Pond coughed delicately, having brought his argument to a

close; and Sir Hubert Wotton remained staring at him, rather more

bewildered by the solution than by the problem. When he rose

slowly to his feet, it was with the air of one shaking off

something that was still an evil dream, even when he knew that it

had happened.

“Well, I’ve got to be going, anyhow,” he said, with an air of heavy

relief. “Got to look in at Whitehall and I fancy I’m late already.

By the way, if what you say is true, this must have happened very

lately. So far as I know, the news of Pitt-Palmer’s suicide hasn’t

come through yet—at least it hadn’t come through this morning.”

“It happened last night,” said Gahagan, and rose from the chair

where he had been sprawling, to take leave of his friend.

When Wotton had departed, a long silence fell upon the two other

friends who remained looking gravely at each other.

“It happened last night,” repeated Gahagan. “That is why I told

you it had something to do with what happened this morning. I got

engaged to Joan Varney this morning.”

“Yes,” said Mr. Pond gently. “I think I understand.”

“Yes, I think you do,” said Gahagan, “but I am going to try to

explain, for all that. Do you know there was one thing almost more

awful than that poor fellow’s death? And it only hit me when I was

half a mile from that accursed house. I knew why I had been one of

the guests.”

He was standing and staring out of the window, with his broad back

turned to Pond; and after the last words he was silent and

continued to stare at the stormy landscape outside. Perhaps

something in it stirred another memory, for when he spoke again, it

was as if he started a new subject, though it was another aspect of

the same one.

“I didn’t tell you anything much about the sort of garden party,

with cocktails, that they had that afternoon before the dinner,

because I felt that until one realized the climax, one couldn’t

realize anything; it would all sound like vapouring about the

weather. But it was rather rum sort of weather yesterday, as it

still is; only it was stormier, and I think the storm has passed

over now. And it was a rum sort of atmosphere, too; though the

weather was only a coincidence, of course, it does sometimes happen

that meteorological conditions make men more conscious of moral

conditions. There was a queer, lurid sort of sky over the garden,

though there was a fair amount of fitful sunshine almost as

capricious as lightning. A huge great mountain of cloud, coloured

like ink and indigo, was coming up behind the pale, pillared façade

of the house, which was still in a wan flush of light; and I

remember even then being chilled by a childish fancy that Pitt-

Palmer was a pale marble statue and part of the building. But

there was little else to give any hint of the secret; nobody could

say that Lady Crome was like a statue; for she went flying and

flaunting about like a bird of paradise. But, whether you believe

it or not, I did from the first feel an oppression, both physical

and psychical; especially psychical. It increased when we went

indoors and the dining-room curtains cut us off from any actual

sight of the storm. They were old-fashioned, dark-red curtains,

with heavy, gilded tassels; and it was as if everything was steeped

in the same dye. You’ve heard of a man seeing red; well, what I

saw was dark red. That’s as near as I can get to the feeling; for

it was a feeling from the first; and I guessed nothing.

“And then that sinister and revolting thing happened before my eyes

at the table; I can see the dark red wine in the port decanters and

the dull glow of the lampshades. And still it seemed as if I were

invisible and impersonal; I was hardly conscious of myself. Of

course, we all had to answer some questions about ourselves; but I

need not tell you about the trail of official fussing that crossed

the track of the tragedy. It did not take long, since it was so

obviously a case of suicide; and the party broke up, straggling out

into the stormy night through the garden. As they passed out, they

seemed to have taken on new shapes, new outlines. Between the hot

night and the horrible death and that foul fog of throttling hatred

in which we had tried to breathe, I began to see something else

about them; perhaps to see them as they were. They were no longer

incongruous but grotesquely congruous; as in a hideous camaraderie.

Of course, this was a mood, and a morbid one; they really had been

different enough; but they had something in common.

“I liked the Pole best; he had a sense of humour, and admirable

manners; but I knew what he meant when he so courteously declined

the position of Pope, because it would involve celibacy. Crome

knew it too, and grinned back at him like a demon. The other one I

liked was Major Wooster, the Anglo-Indian; but something told me

that he was really of the jungle; a shikar not only hunting tigers,

a tiger not only hunting deer. Then there was the titled doctor

with the Assyrian brows and beard; I bet he was more Semitic than

Magyar. But anyhow, he had thick lips in his thick beard, and a

look in his almond eyes that I did not like at all. One of the

worst of them, I should say. I wouldn’t say anything worse of

Blande than that he’s probably too stupid to understand anything

but his own body. He hasn’t enough mind to know that he has a

mind. We all know Sir Oscar Marvell; I remember him marching out,

his furred cloak flapping as if it trailed behind it infinite

echoes of the harmless applause of flappers—but of more foolish

women as well. As to the Italian tenor, he was uncommonly like the

English actor. One could not say any worse of him than that.

“Yes; they were, after all, a very select company. They were

selected by a clever if nearly crazy man as being the six men in

London most likely to lay a plot to seduce his wife. Then, with a

great shock, I quite literally came to myself. I actually realized

my own presence. I was there, too. Crome had made up a choice

party of profligates and picked them carefully. And he had

honoured ME with an invitation to the feast.

“That was what I was. That, at least, was what I was supposed to

be. A damned dandy and dawdling blackguard, always dangling after

other men’s wives… . You know, Pond, that I was not really so

bad as all that; but then, perhaps, neither were they. We were all

innocent in this case; and yet the thundercloud upon the garden

rested on us like a judgment. So was I innocent, in that case you

remember, when I nearly got hanged for hanging round a woman I

really didn’t care about. But it served us right; it was our

atmosphere that was all wrong—what quaint old people used to call

the state of our souls, what the unspeakable bounders in the papers

call sex-appeal. That was why I nearly got hanged; and why there

was a corpse in the house behind me. And there went through my

head like the tramp of armies, old lines written long ago, about

what is in legend the noblest of all lawless loves, when Guinevere,

refusing Lancelot at the last, says in words that had for me a ring

of iron:

“For well ye wot that of this life

There comes but lewd and bitter strife

And death of men and great travail.

“I had hung round all that sort of thing, and yet never quite

clearly seen myself doing it; till two judgments struck me like the

storm out of the sky. I nearly received a sentence from a judge in

a black cap and blood-red robes, that I should be hanged by the

neck until I was dead. And, worse still, I received an invitation

from Lord Crome.”

He continued to gaze out of the window; but Pond heard him mutter

again, like the faint grumbling of the thunder: “And death of men

and great travail.”

In the vast silence that followed, Mr. Pond said in a very small

voice:

“What was the matter with you was that you liked being libelled.”

Gahagan faced about, almost with the gesture of throwing up his

hands, which seemed to fill the frame of the window with his own

gigantic frame; but he was noticeably pale.

“Kamerad, yes,” he said. “I was as small as that.”

He smiled at his friend, but with a glassy and rather ghastly

smile, and then went on:

“Yes; I cared more for that dirty rag of vanity, worse than any

vice, than I did for any vices. How many men have sold their souls

to be admired by fools? I nearly did it, merely to be suspected by

fools. To be the dangerous man, the dark horse, the man of whom

families should be afraid—that is the sort of abject ambition for

which I wasted so much of my life, and nearly lost the fulfilment

of my love. I dawdled, I lounged about, because I could not give

up a bad name. And, by God, it nearly hanged the dog.”

“That is what I supposed,” said Mr. Pond in his most prime and

polite manner. And then Gahagan broke out again:

“I was better than I seemed. But what did that mean, except the

spiritual blasphemy that I wanted to seem worse than I was? What

could it mean, except that, far worse than one who practised vice,

I admired it? Yes, admired it in myself; even when it wasn’t

there. I was the new hypocrite; but mine was the homage that

virtue pays to vice.”

“I understand, however,” said Mr. Pond, in that curiously cold and

distant tone, which had yet a very soothing effect on everybody,

“that you are now effectually cured.”

“I am cured,” said Gahagan grimly. “But it took two dead men and a

gallows to cure me. But the point is, what was I cured of? You

have diagnosed it exactly right, my dear doctor, if I may call you

so. I could not give up the secret pleasure of being slandered.”

“By this time, however,” said Mr. Pond, “other considerations have

come in and induced you to support the insupportable charge of

virtue.”

Gahagan suddenly laughed, harshly and yet, somehow, heartily. Some

would count his first comment a peculiar extension of the laugh.

“I went to confession and the rest of it this morning,” he said,

“and in a vaguer sort of way I’ve come to confession to you. To

confess that I didn’t kill the man. To confess that I never made

love to the man’s wife. In short, to confess that I was a humbug.

To confess that I am not a dangerous man … well, anyhow, after

I’d done all that, I went on whistling, and as happy as a bird, to—

well, I think you know where I went to. There’s a girl I ought to

have fixed things up with long ago; and I always wanted to do it;

that’s the paradox. But a damned sight sillier paradox than any of

your paradoxes, Pond.”

Mr. Pond laughed gently, as he generally did when somebody had told

him, at considerable length, all that he knew already. And he was

not so old, nor despite his manner so cold, as not to form some

sort of guess about the actual termination of the rather

exasperating romance of Captain Gahagan.

This story started with some statements about the way in which

stories tend to get into a tangle, one tale being mixed up with

another tale, especially when they are true tales. This story also

started, and ought also presumably to stop, with the very

extraordinary tragedy and scandal in the house of Lord Crome, when

that promising young politician, Mr. Pitt-Palmer, unaccountably

tumbled down dead. It ought really to end with a proper account of

his impressive public funeral; of the chorus of praise devoted to

him in the Press; and the stately compliments laid on his tomb like

flowers from the leaders of all the parties in Parliament; from

those eloquent words of the Leader of the Opposition beginning

“Much as we may have differed in politics,” to those (if possible)

still more eloquent observations of the Leader of the House,

beginning “Confident as I am that our cause is independent even of

the noblest personality, I yet have to lament, etc.”

Anyhow, it is really very irrelevant to the central plot of this

story that it should stray from the funeral of Pitt-Palmer to the

wedding of Gahagan. It will be enough to say that, as already

hinted, the actual effect of this shocking incident on Gahagan was

to drive him back to an old love; an old love who was still

conveniently young. A certain Miss Violet Varney was at that time

prominent on the stage; the word “prominent” has been selected with

some care from other possible adjectives. In the general view of

society, Miss Joan Varney was the sister of Miss Violet Varney. In

the perverse and personal view of Captain Gahagan, Miss Violet

Varney was the sister of Miss Joan Varney; nor was he eager to

insist on this relationship. He loved Joan but he did not even

like Violet; but there is no need to enter on the entanglements of

that other story here. Are not all these things written in the

Chronicles of the Kings of Israel?

It is enough to say that on that particular morning, swept clear

and shining after the storm, Captain Gahagan came out of the church

in the little by-street and very cheerfully took the road to the

house of the Varney family, where he found Miss Joan Varney

pottering about in the garden with a spud, and told her several

things of some importance to both of them. When Miss Violet Varney

heard that her younger sister was engaged to Captain Gahagan, she

went off with admirable promptitude to a theatrical club and got

engaged to one of the numerous noodles of more or less noble birth

who could be used for the purpose. She very sensibly broke off

this engagement about a month afterwards; but she got HER

engagement into the society papers first.

THE TERRIBLE TROUBADOUR

“In nature you must go very low to find things that go so high.”

This was commonly included by collectors among the Paradoxes of Mr.

Pond; for it came towards the end of a rather dull and eminently

sensible discourse, and it made no sense. And these were

recognized as the stigmata of the stylistic methods of Mr. Pond.

But in this case, as a fact, he had plagiarized from his old

acquaintance Dr. Paul Green, author of The Dog or the Monkey,

Studies in the Domestication of Anthropoids, Notes on Neanderthal

Development, etc., etc.

Dr. Paul Green was a smallish man, pale, slender and slightly lame;

but his activity, even in bodily movement, was relatively

remarkable, and his mind moved as quickly as a quick-firing gun.

It was this old acquaintance who, on one sunny afternoon, came out

of Mr. Pond’s past to bring him shocking and even nerve-shattering

news; a report as alarming as the report of a gun.

But when Mr. Pond was told, on such very solid authority, that his

friend Captain Gahagan was an escaped murderer, after all, he said,

“Tut, tut.” He was given to what is called understatement; of

which he knew the Greek name, but did not employ it needlessly.

The conversation, indeed, had opened casually enough, turning from

the doctor’s health to the doctor’s hobby of studying animal

habits. A little light talk about Eohippus; some airy badinage

about Homo Kanensis; a little bright back-chat about Vialleton’s

Études sur les Reflexes des Animaux Tétrapodes; rising to a certain

sharpness of dialogue, for on this point of Darwin and Natural

Selection the two friends had never agreed.

“I never can see,” said Mr. Pond, “how a change, that might have

helped an animal if it came quickly, could have helped him if it

came slowly. And came to his great-grandchild, long after he ought

to have perished without leaving any grandchildren. It might be

better if I had three legs, say, in order to stand firmly on two

while kicking a fellow bureaucrat with the third. It might be

better if I had three legs; but it wouldn’t be better if I only had

a rudimentary leg.”

“It might be better if I had two legs,” said the doctor grimly,

“instead of one lame leg that is hardly a leg at all. And yet I

find it fairly useful.”

Mr. Pond, who was commonly very tactful, chid himself softly for

tactlessness in forgetting that his old acquaintance was lame.

But, at least, he was far too tactful to apologize, or even too

obviously to change the subject.

He proceeded in his mild and fluent way: “I mean that till a leg

is long enough to run or climb, it would only be an extra weight

for the runner or climber to carry.”

“It’s pretty queer,” said the doctor, “that we should have started

off talking about running and climbing. I didn’t come here to

discuss Darwinism or anything half so sane and sensible. But if

you think I’m suspect, as the atrocious atheist, I may explain that

I don’t want you just now to listen to me, but to my friend the

vicar of Hanging Burgess, the Reverend Cyprian Whiteways, whose

views are probably quite as anti-scientific as your own. I don’t

suppose he’s a Darwinian; but, anyhow, I promised to introduce him

to you, and he wants to tell you about things that happened rather

later than the later Stone Age.”

“Then, what do you mean,” asked Pond, “by talking about running and

climbing?”

“I meant, I am sorry to say,” replied Dr. Green, “that the vicar

has a pretty bad story about that friend of yours, Captain Gahagan,

whose legs seem to be very good at climbing, and still better at

running away.”

“It’s a serious thing,” said Pond, gravely, “to accuse a soldier of

running away.”

“It’s a much more serious thing of which the vicar accuses him,”

said Green. “He accuses him of climbing a balcony and shooting a

rival, and then running away. But it’s not my story; I’m not the

story, but only the introduction.”

“Climbing a balcony,” mused Mr. Pond; “for a vicar it sounds rather

a romantic story.”

“I know,” said the doctor, “the sort of story that begins with a

rope-ladder and ends with a rope.”

Mr. Pond, as he heard the unequal step of his lame friend echoing

away down the paved paths of the garden, relapsed into a gloomy

mood. He was quite willing to accept his medical friend merely as

a letter of introduction. But it was a rather black-edged and

tragic sort of letter of introduction. Whatever story the Rev.

Cyprian was going to tell, it was another story against his

unfortunate friend Peter Gahagan. And Gahagan was so very

unfortunate as to suggest to some a wild doubt about whether he was

merely unfortunate. Some had the sudden and horrible thought that,

perhaps, he was fortunate. Twice before, he had been mixed up in

matters involving a mysterious and violent death; with, at least, a

savour of murder. In both cases he had been cleared. But three is

an unlucky number.

Finally, the Rev. Cyprian Whiteways was a shock; a shock because of

his frankness and fair-mindedness.

Mr. Pond would never, at any time, have stooped to the stupid idea

that clergymen are stupid. He did not take his ideas of real life

from farces like The Private Secretary. But the Rev. Cyprian was

so very much the reverse of stupid; a man with a rugged face like

old red sandstone; and, indeed, he suggested a rock of that rich

colouring which glows with the past; he carried his English

countryside with him in an indescribable suggestion of depth and

background; he could not talk of common things without, somehow,

suggesting the weather or the turn of night or day; he was a born

descriptive writer who only talked. But nobody could doubt that it

was truth; or, at least, truthfulness.

It was so substantial a witness who told Mr. Pond in considerable

detail the black and bloody story of Gahagan’s hidden sin. And the

curious effect of all this on Mr. Pond was to make him jump up

briskly with a broad smile of relief on his bearded and somewhat

owlish visage; declaring with unusual cheeriness that it was quite

all right, they had only to ask Gahagan himself, and he would tell

them all about it. Confrontation, it was sometimes called.

As for Dr. Green, with the letter of introduction, his job was

done, and he was somewhat impatient of Pond’s formalities; he

stumped off, merely warning the vicar that he had better have a

lawyer, if he was to confront that plausible Irish rogue.

So, when the scientist was already far away, reabsorbed in the

study of a pithecanthropos as a pet, all that remained of his

intervention was a solicitor named Luke Little, very much on the

spot.

Mr. Pond’s friend, Sir Hubert Wotton, the well-known diplomatist,

took the chair; but Mr. Little did not mind who took chairs so long

as he took charge.

“This is a very irregular inquiry, gentlemen,” he said. “Only a

special assurance would have induced me to place my client’s case

before it. Sir Hubert and Mr. Pond declare, I understand, that an

explanation will be demanded here and now.”

Then he added: “It is a painful matter, as I think Mr. Pond will

agree.”

“It is a very painful matter, indeed,” replied Pond, gravely, “that

an old friend of mine should be under suspicion of a horrible

action.”

His friend, Wotton, looked at Pond for a moment with a frosty stare

of surprise; but he stared a great deal more when he was startled

by Gahagan himself, speaking, suddenly, for the first and last time

in all the first hours of the interview.

“Yes,” he said, with a grim and inscrutable visage. “It is

certainly a horrible story.”

“In any case, then,” resumed the lawyer, “I can now ask my client,

without prejudice, to repeat the story.”

“It’s an ugly story,” said the clergyman in his honest way, “and

I’ll tell it as shortly as I can.”

Pond had heard the story, already, told in a way at once looser and

more elaborate, and allowing of more descriptive detail or

inference than the statement made under such very legal

supervision. But even as he heard it again in more exact form, he

could not get rid of a feeling that the scene described was

unnaturally vivid to him, but with the vividness of a nightmare.

There was no particular reason, at that stage, for comparing the

story to a nightmare; except that the two principal incidents

happened at night.

They happened in the vicar’s garden, close to the balcony of the

vicar’s house; and perhaps the impression, which was rather like an

oppression, was somehow connected with another night darkening the

night; a living night of vegetation; for it was suggested,

throughout, that the balcony was loaded with pots and palms and

clutched by climbing plants with heavy and pendent leaves.

Perhaps, after all, it was only some vague, verbal association with

the name of Hanging Burgess; as if the mystery were somehow

associated with the hanging gardens of Babylon. Perhaps, again, it

was partly the irrational trail of the talk with Dr. Green, with

his creed of blind growth and a groping life-force in a godless

dark; for Green developed his view of development with every fancy

from botany as well as biology.

On the whole, however, Mr. Pond concluded that his own queer mood

was the result of the one fact, which it had really been necessary

to describe in detail. For the vicar had been obliged to explain,

on both occasions, in order to make his tale intelligible, that the

front of the balcony was scaled from below by a titanic, tropical

creeper, with ribbed and interlaced limbs and large, fantastic

leaves. It is not altogether an exaggeration to say that the

creeper was the principal character in the story.

“This business happened during the Great War,” explained the

clergyman, “when my daughter and I were living in my house at

Hanging Burgess. But the two houses on each side of us were empty,

due to the drainage of human material common at the time. At

least, they were both empty for a considerable period, though they

were handsome houses with large gardens, sloping down to the river.

Then my friend Dr. Green came down to be my next-door neighbour and

prosecute his scientific researches in a quiet place. He was

writing a book, you know, on the domestication of animals; dogs and

cats and pet marmosets and monkeys, and so on; and my daughter, who

is interested in such pets, helped him a little with his work.

“It is a happy time to look back upon, for us who were old cronies;

perhaps because it was a quiet time.

“And then our solitude was broken, as it seemed by accident, and

all the trouble and tragedy began.

“First of all, a young artist of the name of Albert Ayres rented

the house next door, though he seemed to want it mostly for a base

in which to leave his baggage, for he was wandering over the

country making sketches; and it is only fair, as you will see

presently, to admit that he did say, once, that he would start

straight away next morning on one of his sketching tours. I mean

that we cannot, in any case, actually prove what became of him.

Unfortunately, I know only too well what became of him.

“He was an interesting individual; perhaps a little too like the

old notion of an artist; the sort one can hardly call either

carelessly or carefully picturesque; with a halo of yellow hair

which the sympathetic might connect with Galahad and the

unsympathetic with Struwwelpeter. Mind you, there was nothing

about him effeminate, and nothing false about his position in

relation to the war. He had been invalided out, and what he was

doing was a necessary job and not a funk-hole; and, at the moment,

he was enjoying a short and very well-earned holiday.

“It is only fair to Captain Gahagan to say that, even in their

subsequent quarrel, even in the last, blackest days of hatred, and,

I hope, of madness, which ended in murder, the Captain never

sneered at his rival upon that point, or assumed anything like the

swagger of khaki. But, at the time, Captain Gahagan was still in

khaki, having a very short leave from the front, which he was

supposed to spend at the neighbouring inn, but did spend mostly in

my house.

“You will understand my reluctance in speaking of the matter; the

fact that he was on short leave may have given a certain impatience

to his rather headlong courtship of my daughter, for it could be

called nothing else. Some say that women do not specially object

to that; but I would much prefer not to presume on any speculations

about that matter. But to deal entirely with the facts. They are

as follows:

“One evening, just after sunset, or about dusk, I was walking in my

garden with the doctor, and we were joined, shortly afterwards, by

Albert Ayres. I had just asked my friend Green to drop in and take

some dinner with us; but he happened to be rather exhausted with a

heavy day of his scientific work; he looked pale and tired; and he

declined in a rather distant and distracted manner. In fact, I

thought he was looking ill.”

“He has not very good health,” interposed Mr. Pond, suddenly. “He

doesn’t go about very much. You must remember he is lame.” The

others stared at him again, as if not seeing any importance in the

interruption; and again they were still more puzzled by his further

comment; for he added quite calmly:

“The clue to all this mystery is the fact that Dr. Green is lame.”

“I have not the wildest notion what you mean,” said the vicar of

Hanging Burgess briskly. “But, anyhow, I had better get on and

tell you what really happened; and you will see that it certainly

had nothing to do with either lameness or Dr. Green.

“In strolling round the garden we had paused under the giant

creeper that grows out of the flower-bed and shoots right up to the

balcony; and Ayres was just remarking on its unique strength and

luxuriousness, when we all had a sort of a shock. For we saw the

whole creeper move and twist like a monstrous serpent, in that

still garden; every limb of it heaved and writhed and the whole

framework of its foliage was shaken as by some impossibly localized

earthquake. Then we saw that long legs like a giant’s were

swinging downwards and kicking wildly above our heads; and Captain

Gahagan, missing his last foothold, fell on his feet on the gravel

path and faced us with a broad grin.

“‘Pray forgive me,’ he said,’ I have been paying an afternoon call.

I dropped in to tea, or perhaps I should say, hopped up to tea; and

I have just dropped out again.’

“I told him, perhaps a little frigidly, that we were always pleased

to receive visitors, but that they generally came in by the front

door. He asked me, in a rather brazen way, if I had no poetic

sympathy with Romeo and the romance of climbing balconies. I

preferred not to reply; but my friend, the doctor, was staring

curiously at the creeper, probably in some freak of his merely

botanical curiosity; and he said, with his faintly acid humour:

‘Isn’t there rather a satire on Romeo in the fact that a weed like

that can climb a balcony? It isn’t quite so common to see a

tropical plant ringing the bell and coming in at the front door.

Climbing doesn’t seem a safe way of classifying. In nature, you

must go very low to find things that go so high.’”

Mr. Pond sat up abruptly and seemed to exhale a breath; but all he

said was, “I thought so.”

“The artist named Ayres,” continued the vicar, “seemed more annoyed

than either of us at this absurd adventure; and his comment was

really much more provocative, though he only said, coolly: ‘Well,

it looks an easy thing to climb; as easy as a great, green ladder.

I fancy I could climb it myself, if it came to that.’

“Then I realized for the first lime, for I’m rather slow in these

things, that Gahagan was glaring at him, as he answered sharply:

‘Am I to understand that it may come to that?’ And then I realized

that they were both glaring at each other; and I guessed, for the

first time, why they hated each other; and what was the meaning of

that scene in my quiet garden.

“Well, I will get on as quickly as I can to the culmination of

these rash boasts, or challenges, of the two tragic rivals. For,

indeed, I do not know which of them had the worst tragedy. Night

had fallen and the moon had risen, though it was not very much

later, cutting up the shady garden into a new pattern of shadows,

when I happened to look out of my study window, which is on an

upper floor.

“I was smoking and reading a book, when a noise like a dog barking,

or rather howling, made me put my head, more or less carelessly,

out of the window; I assumed that it was one of Dr. Green’s dogs

and did not think much of the matter; subconsciously, perhaps,

something spectral about the moonstruck garden and the mood that it

stirred, or some more mysterious premonition of what was to follow,

made the howl sound more hollow and even horrible than it really

was.

“A clear moon was rising high behind me; most of the shady garden

was in all the denser shade; but there were large, pale patches and

squares of moonshine on the paths and the wall in front of me, cut

out as sharply as the pasteboard frame of some shadow-pantomime.

Perhaps the parallel seized on my fancy, partly because light and

shadow were thus bent or doubled into different planes, vertical or

horizontal, like the black and white paper from which children cut

out the figures for such a play. Anyhow, I did think, instantly

and very vividly, of a shadow-pantomime; and, the next instant, I

saw one of the pantomime figures passing in black silhouette across

the wall.

“I knew at once whose shadow it was. Of course, it was drawn out

and distorted; you know how deceptive shadows are; but I could see

the straggling tufts that reminded one of Struwwelpeter; and I

think I told you before that Ayres, the artist, was a little too

like the traditional artist who hasn’t had his hair cut. Also, he

affected that sort of languid stoop that such artists assume; and

there was the high-shouldered stoop exaggerated, as shadows do

exaggerate.

“The next moment, another of these dark caricatures had appeared on

the wall; and it was even more unmistakable. It was also more

active; it was not only a shadow-pantomime but—in a pretty creepy

sense—a knockabout pantomime.”

“Shadows are very deceptive,” said Mr. Pond; and again his friends

stared at him, not because his intervention was important, but

because it seemed trivial and totally unnecessary. But before he

relapsed again into silence, he added:

“The most deceptive thing about a shadow is that it may be quite

accurate.”

“Well, really!” exploded Wotton; but his moderately mild explosion

was overshadowed by one of the abrupt movements which once or twice

moved the gigantic Gahagan to overwhelming but rather baffling

gestures, to detached and yet outrageous interventions. He turned

to his accuser with a bow of overbearing courtesy, or even

courtliness, and said:

“You need not be alarmed, sir. That is one of Mr. Pond’s

paradoxes. We are all very proud of our Pond and of his paradoxes.

Try them in your bath. Pond’s paradoxes are in every home. What

would Mother do without Pond’s—”

“Don’t be a fool, Gahagan!” said Hubert Wotton; and his voice had a

ring of steel which his friends had always respected. There was a

silence, in which Mr. Pond said simply:

“I never uttered a paradox in my life. What I said was a truism.”

The vicar of Hanging Burgess looked considerably baffled, but did

not lose his composure, and continued his story.

“I’m afraid all this seems to me rather off the point; especially

as I haven’t come to the point. I mean the point of my story. Of

course, it doesn’t matter whether the shadows were deceptive or

not; because I saw the real people a minute or two afterwards.

It’s true I only saw one of them for a minute, you might say for a

flash; but the other I saw plainly enough.

“The first figure, the long-haired figure I had already identified

with the artist, ran very quickly across the moonlit patch and

vanished into the vast shadow of the creeper that climbed the

balcony; but there is no doubt that he began to climb the creeper.

“The second figure stood for a moment, staring, in the full stare

of the moon; and there was no doubt about him at all. It was

Captain Gahagan, in khaki, and he already had his big service

revolver in his hand. In a high, unnatural voice he cried after

and cursed the other unfortunate troubadour, who had climbed his

romantic rope-ladder of leaves, exactly as he had climbed it

himself.

“At that instant the whole situation became finally clear; for I

saw the hairy head of the unfortunate artist rising out of the

tangle of tropical leaves, in shadow, but all the more unmistakable

for being haloed in the moonshine. But the same moonshine fell

full on the face of the Captain, as glaring as a photographic

portrait; and it glared with a frightful grin or grimace of

hatred.”

Mr. Pond again interposed gently, but with the general effect of a

jerk: “You say it was hatred. Are you sure it was not horror?”

The vicar was very intelligent, and thought before he answered,

even when he did not in the least understand. Then he said: “I

think so. Besides, why should Captain Gahagan be horrified merely

at seeing Mr. Ayres?”

“Perhaps,” said Pond, after a pause, “because he had not had his

hair cut.”

“Pond!” said Wotton very sharply. “Do you fancy this is a case for

jokes? You seem to have forgotten that you said, yourself, it was

a painful matter.”

“I said it was a painful matter,” said Pond, “to think a horrible

thing was done by an old friend.” Then he said, after one of his

sudden pauses: “But I wasn’t thinking of Gahagan.”

The stupefied vicar seemed to have given up everything but the

stubborn pursuit of his story.

“As I have told you, Captain Gahagan cursed his rival from below,

and called on him to come down; but he did not attempt to climb the

creeper himself, though he had already shown how quickly he could

do it. Unfortunately, he did something else; which he could do

much more quickly. I saw the blue flash of the pistol-barrel in

the moon, as he lifted it; and then the red flash; and then a puff

of smoke detached itself and climbed the sky, like a cloud; and the

man on the green ladder fell crashing like a stone through the

thrashing great leaves to the dark space below.

“I could not see so clearly what was happening in that dark space;

but I knew, for all practical purposes, that the man was dead; for

his slayer laid hold of one leg of the corpse and dragged it away

down the darkling and descending paths of the garden. And when I

heard a distant splash, I knew he had thrown the corpse into the

river.

“Well, as I told you before, that is my very serious testimony to

what I saw and knew; but I give it only from a sense of social duty

to any individuals who may be involved; I admit the circumstances

are such that legal proof would be very difficult now.

“Albert Ayres had entirely disappeared by next morning; but it is

true, as I have said, that he had once spoken of going off on a

sketching-tour very early.

“Captain Gahagan had also entirely disappeared by next morning; but

I believe it is true that his leave was practically up, that in any

case he had to return to the front; and it was utterly hopeless to

raise a question—which would, already, be called a doubtful

question—at a moment when every man was needed, when common

convicts were already working out their expiation in the field; and

when all information had to be hampered, and a veil hung between us

and all that vast labyrinth called ‘somewhere in France.’ But

hearing that, for personal reasons, it was essential that Captain

Gahagan should be asked to clear or explain his record, I have

brought the matter up again now. And I have stated nothing that I

did not see.”

“You have stated it very clearly,” said Mr. Pond. “More clearly

than you know. But even on the clearest moonlight night, as we

agreed, shadows can be very deceptive.”

“You’ve said that before,” said Sir Hubert rather irritably.

“And, as I have also said before,” observed the unruffled Mr. Pond,

“a shadow is most misleading when it is precisely correct.”

Silence suddenly fell on the group; and the silence became more and

more tense, for, after these random shots, which seemed so very

random, fired by Mr. Pond as he retired from the argument, everyone

felt that nothing could now delay the main action. For some time

it looked rather like inaction; for Gahagan, who had been growing

gloomier and gloomier, still sat kicking his heels, as if he had

nothing to say. And indeed, when sharply called on by Sir Hubert

for his statement, he was, at first, understood to declare

seriously, not to say grimly, that he had nothing to say.

“What can I say, except what they call pleading guilty? What can I

say, except that I did do a horrible thing; I did commit a hateful

crime; and my sin is ever before me.”

The solicitor seemed suddenly to bristle with electric needles of a

sort of cold excitement.

“Pardon me, pardon me!” he cried. “Before you say any more, before

you say a word more, it must be understood that it may be necessary

to take note of it in a legal manner. On some minor matters we are

permitted a certain discretion; but if we are to listen to an

actual confession of murder—”

Gahagan shouted; he shouted so loud that the others were almost too

surprised to notice that it was a shout of laughter, but not very

genial laughter.

“What!” he cried. “Do you think I’m confessing to a murder? Oh,

this is getting tiresome! Of course I never committed any murder.

I said I committed a crime; but it’s not to any damned little

lawyer that I have to apologize for it.”

He swung round, facing the clergyman; and his whole bodily and

mental attitude seemed to alter; so that, when he spoke at last, it

was like a new man speaking.

“I mean, it’s for you. What can I say to you? It’s personal for

you; I mean, it’s real. It’s no good talking at large about such

things. It’s no good hiding in a crowd; or saying that the crime

was committed by a lot of poor devils on leave from hell; to whom a

holiday was heaven; only it was a very earthly paradise; a little

too like a Moslem paradise. I did make love to your daughter when

I had no right to, for I didn’t really know my own mind. None of

us had any mind on those holidays from hell. And it’s true that I

did have a rival. It’s true I was in a rage with my rival; I’m

still in a rage with him, when I think of what he did. Only—” He

paused, as with a new embarrassment.

“Go on,” said Mr. Pond gently.

“Only my rival wasn’t the artist with the long hair,” said Gahagan.

Hubert Wotton again looked up sharply, with a frowning stare; but

he spoke quietly as he directed Gahagan to tell his story properly

from the start.

“I had better start,” said Gahagan, “where the other story started:

just about the time when we both heard the howl of a dog in the

dark garden. I may explain that I was actually staying with Ayres,

the artist, for that night; we had become quite good friends,

really; though there may have been a bit of romantic swagger about

the troubadour business at an earlier time.

“I was packing up and sorting out some of my light luggage; that is

how I happened to be cleaning my service revolver. Ayres was

looking through some of his sketch-books; and I left him at it when

I went out, just as Mr. Whiteways looked out, in casual curiosity,

over that sudden noise in the night. Only I heard what he did not

hear. I not only heard what sounded like the howl of a dog, but I

also heard a whistle, such as a man uses when calling a dog.

“Also, I saw what he did not see. For an instant, in a gap in the

trellis and tracery of a vine, I saw, very white in the moonlight,

the face of Paul Green, that distinguished man of science. He is

distinguished and he looks distinguished; I remember thinking, at

the time, what a fine head he had, and that the silver moulding of

his features under the moon made them quite beautiful. I had a

reason for having my attention thus arrested by that silvery mask,

for, at that precise moment, it wore a sort of smile of hatred that

turned one’s blood cold.

“Then the face vanished; and again my experience was much like the

vicar’s, except that I did not see everything which happened just

behind my back. But I swung round in time to see that somebody had

run across the path, and begun to climb the creeper. He climbed it

very quickly, much quicker than I had done, but it was not easy to

see him or recognize him in the dark shadow of the leaves.

“I had an idea that he was long in the limbs and had the sort of

high-shouldered stoop that has been described; then I saw, as the

vicar did, the head emerge clear of the foliage, only outlined by

the moon with a sort of bristly halo of hair. Only then, for the

second time that night, I saw what the vicar did not see. The

Romeo, the climbing troubadour, turned his head, and, for a moment,

I saw it in profile, a black shape against the moon. And I said to

myself: ‘My God! It’s a dog, after all.’”

The vicar echoed the invocation faintly; the lawyer made a sharp

movement as if to intervene; and Wotton told his friend rather

brusquely to go on; which had the effect of producing a sort of

abrupt languor, alarmingly like a disposition to leave off.

“Rather interesting man, Marco Polo,” said Captain Gahagan, in a

vaguely conversational tone. “I think it was Marco Polo, the

Venetian; anyhow, it was one of those early mediæval travellers.

You know everybody used to say they told nothing but tall stories

about mandrakes and mermaids; but, in many cases, it has been found

since that their tall tales were true. Anyhow, this chap said

there were men walking about with the heads of dogs. Now, if

you’ll look at one of the larger apes, like the baboon, you’ll see

that his head really is very like a dog’s; not nearly so much like

a man’s as the head of one of the smaller monkeys.”

Mr. Little, the lawyer, was rapidly turning over some of his

papers, with a shrewd frown and a sharp, alert manner.

“One moment, Captain Gahagan,” he interposed. “I have a fancy that

you are rather a traveller, yourself; and have picked up

travellers’ tales in many different places. It looks to me as if

you had picked up this one in the Rue Morgue.”

“I wish I had,” replied the Captain.

“In the story there,” pursued the solicitor, “I think there was an

escaped anthropoid ape who disobeyed his master and would not

return.”

“Yes,” said Mr. Pond, in a low voice, rather like a groan. “But in

this case it was not disobeying its master.”

“You had better tell the rest of this story, Pond,” said the

Captain, with one of his curious collapses into irresponsible

repose. “You evidently guessed the real story, I don’t know how,

before I began to tell it.”

Mr. Little appeared to be somewhat annoyed, and snapped out: “I

consider the Captain told this curious tale, for what it is worth,

in a very melodramatic and misleading manner. I have it, in my

notes, that he certainly said that ‘Somebody ran across the path

and began to climb the creeper.’”

“I was quite pedantically correct,” said Gahagan, waving his hand,

condescendingly. “I was careful to state that some BODY ran and

climbed. I attempted no theological or metaphysical speculations

about the soul of an ape.”

“But this is perfectly ghastly!” cried the clergyman, who was

deeply shaken. “Are you sure the thing I saw was an ape?”

“I was quite close,” said the Captain. “I saw the shape and you

only saw the shadow.”

“No,” said Pond softly, “he saw the shape and could not believe it

because it was the shadow. That is what I meant by saying a shadow

can deceive by accuracy. Nine times out of ten, a shadow is out of

drawing. But it can happen, in special circumstances, that it is

an exact silhouette. Only we always expect it to be distorted; and

so we are deceived by its not being distorted. The vicar was not

surprised that the hairy, high-shouldered Mr. Ayres should throw a

shadow looking like a shambling hunchback or a bristly, humped

figure. But in reality it WAS a bristly, humped figure. I guessed

that when he first said, just afterwards, that your own figure was

much more unmistakable. Why should it be unmistakable, unless the

other was a mistake?”

“From where I was, there could be no mistake,” said Gahagan. “I

knew it was an ape, and I guessed it was from the cages or kennels

of the eminent biologist next door. I had a wild hope it might

have been meant as some ghastly joke; but I wasn’t taking any

risks; I happen to know that sort of anthropoid is no joke. At the

best, he might easily bite and then—well, there were all sorts of

nightmare notions half-formed in one’s mind.

“There was another side to your biological friend’s interest in

pets; vivisection, inoculation, intoxication, drugs—Lord knows

what might be mixed up in it. So I shot the brute dead, and I’m

afraid I can’t apologize. I threw the body into the river; as you

know, it’s a very rapid and rushing river, and, so far as I know,

nothing more was ever heard of it. Certainly, Dr. Paul Green did

not venture to advertise for it in the papers.”

The solid and deep-chested rustic parson suddenly shuddered from

head to foot. The spasm passed and he said, heavily, that it was

an awful business.

“And THAT is what I meant,” said Mr. Pond, “by saying how bad it is

to hear an old acquaintance accused of a horrible action. It was,

also, what I meant by saying that the key to all this riddle is the

fact that Dr. Green is lame.”

“Even now,” muttered the vicar, “I’m not so clear what you mean by

that.”

“It’s all ugly enough,” answered Pond, “but I suppose we may fairly

say that the doctor is, in a rather literal sense, a mad doctor.

The point is that I think I know what finally drove him mad. He

had a remarkable personality; he was in love with the lady at the

Vicarage and had got a good deal of influence there; as Gahagan

truly says, he’s really a very fine-looking fellow and, naturally,

quite active; only everything was conditioned by the accident that

he was lame.

“What put the finishing touch to his madness, on that terrible

summer night under the moon, was something that I think one can

partly understand, with a little imagination; something not

altogether unnatural, if anything ending in such insanity can be

anything but unnatural. He heard his rivals boasting about doing

the one thing he could not do. First, one of the young men

swaggered about having done it—you do swagger, Gahagan, and it’s

no good saying you don’t. And the other young man was worse; for

he actually sneered at doing it because it was so easy to do when,

for Green, it was impossible to do.

“Naturally, a mind like his leapt, as we know it did leap, even in

conversation, to the retort that climbing is no great sign of

superiority; that a brainless creeper can climb; that an ape can

climb better than a man. ‘You have to go very low to find things

that go so high.’ Considered as a logical repartee, it was quite a

good one. But his mind was not running merely on logic and

repartee; he was blind and boiling with jealousy and passion, and

he was a little cracked. Let’s hope he only meant to make a sort

of demonstration; but, anyhow, that was what he was trying to

demonstrate.”

Mr. Little, the lawyer, still turned a flinty face to the company;

he had obviously taken a dislike to Gahagan, who had a way of

irritating legal and law-abiding persons.

“I do not know if we are required to accept this extraordinary

story, on the strength of Mr. Pond’s ingenious hypothesis,” he said

rather sharply; “but there is one more question I should like to

ask.”

He looked down at his papers, as if consulting them, and then

looked up again, saying, still more sharply, in the style he had

learnt from cross-examinations: “Is it not true, Captain Gahagan,

that you are rather famous for telling remarkable stories? I have

it in my notes that you once delighted the company by saying you

had seen six great sea-serpents, each swallowing the last. You

reported a remarkable little incident of a giant who was buried up

to the eyebrows in Muswell Hill; and you are supposed to have given

a very vivid description of a water-spout frozen all the way up to

the sky. Your interesting account of the discovery of the ruins of

the Tower of Babel—”

Sir Hubert Wotton, with all his apparent simplicity, had a quality

of sense that sometimes struck like a sledge-hammer. He had

preserved the silence of perfect impartiality throughout; but he

suddenly stopped the last splutter of the solicitor’s spitefulness,

as if he had struck him physically dumb.

“I cannot have all this,” he said. “We know Gahagan; and his yarns

are all nonsense, and your trying to turn them against him is worse

nonsense. So long as you had a serious charge to bring, we gave

you every opportunity to prove it. If you are going to talk about

things that nobody alive ever took seriously, least of all Gahagan,

I rule them out.”

“Very well,” snapped Mr. Little, “my last question shall be a very

practical one. If Captain Gahagan only did what he says he did,

why the devil didn’t he say so? Why did he disappear? Why did he

do a bolt early next morning?”

Peter Gahagan lifted his large figure laboriously out of the seat;

he did not even look at the lawyer; but his eyes were fixed on the

old clergyman, with a profound expression of sorrow.

“There is an answer to that,” he said. “But I would much rather

give it to anybody except Mr. Whiteways.”

And, strangely enough perhaps, the moment Mr. Whiteways heard this

refusal he rose also and held out his hand to Gahagan.

“I believe you,” he said. “It’s just that last sentence that has

made me believe you.”

The scornful solicitor, being thus deserted by his own client,

stuffed his papers back into his little black bag; and the

irregular conference broke up.

Gahagan did tell the truth about the last question afterwards, to

the person to whom he told everything, to Joan Varney, to whom he

was engaged. And, queer as it sounded, she seemed to understand.

“If you like to put it so,” he said, “I didn’t run away from the

police; I ran away from the girl. And I know it sounds mad; but I

really felt at the moment I was doing my best for her, in a beastly

situation and among a lot of beastly alternatives. I knew by next

morning that the vicar was saying he had seen me commit murder.

Suppose I contradicted it—well, to begin with, she would have to

know that her old friend, the friend of her pets, was a horrible

lunatic who had offered her a sort of disgusting insult at the

best.

“But it wasn’t only that. I had behaved as badly as anybody; I was

in a shamefully false position; and, if I remained, there was

nothing before us but crawling through all that mire of miserable

explanation and hopeless remorse, in which it is hard to say

whether the man or the woman has the worst of it. And then a queer

thought came to me—a secret, almost subconscious thought; but I

couldn’t get rid of the notion. Suppose she went on thinking, and

remembered afterwards, in calmer times, that one man had killed

another for her. She would be horrified; but she would not be

humiliated. A mad whisper kept on repeating to me that in the long

run she would be—a little proud.”

“I think you’re right about her,” said Joan, in her straight way.

“But, all the same, you ought to have told her the truth.”

“Joan,” he said, “I simply hadn’t the courage.”

“I know,” she said. “I also know all about your having the D.S.O.;

and I’ve seen you, myself, jump a chasm it made me sick to look at.

But that’s what’s the matter with all you fine, fighting

gentlemen.” Her head lifted very slightly. “You haven’t the

courage.”

A TALL STORY

They had been discussing the new troubles in Germany: the three old

friends, Sir Hubert Wotton, the famous official; Mr. Pond, the

obscure official; and Captain Gahagan, who never did a stroke of

work in the way of putting pen to paper, but liked making up the

most fantastic stories on the spur of the moment. On this

occasion, however, the group was increased to four; for Gahagan’s

wife was present, a candid-looking young woman with light-brown

hair and dark-brown eyes. They had only just recently been

married; and the presence of Joan Gahagan still stimulated the

Captain to rather excessive flights of showing-off.

Captain Gahagan looked like a Regency buck; Mr. Pond looked like a

round-eyed fish, with the beard and brow of Socrates; Sir Hubert

Wotton looked like Sir Hubert Wotton—it summed up a very sound and

virile quality in him, for which his friends had a great respect.

“It’s an infernal shame,” Wotton was saying, “the way these fellows

have treated the Jews: perfectly decent and harmless Jews, who were

no more Communists than I am; little men who’d worked their way up

by merit and industry, all kicked out of their posts without a

penny of compensation. Surely you agree with that, Gahagan?”

“Of course I do,” replied Gahagan. “I never kicked a Jew. I can

distinctly remember three and a half occasions on which I

definitely refrained from doing so. As for all those hundreds and

thousands of poor little fiddlers and actors and chess-players, I

think it was a damned shame that they should be kicked out or

kicked at all. But I fancy they must be kicking themselves, for

having been so faithful to Germany and even, everywhere else,

pretty generally pro-German.”

“Even that can be exaggerated,” said Mr. Pond. “Do you remember

the case of Carl Schiller, that happened during the War? It was

all kept rather quiet, as I have reason to know; for the thing

happened, in some sense, in my department. I have generally found

spy stories the dullest of all forms of detective fiction; in my

own modest researches into the light literature of murder, I

invariably avoid them. But this story really did have an

unexpected and rather astonishing ending. Of course, you know that

in wartime the official dealing with these things is very much

exposed to amateurs, as the Duke of Wellington was exposed to

authors. We persecuted the spies; and the spy-maniacs persecuted

us. They were always coming to us to say they had seen certain

persons who looked like spies. We vainly assured them that spies

do not look like spies. As a matter of fact, the enemy was pretty

ingenious in keeping the really suspicious character just out of

sight; sometimes by his being ordinary; sometimes actually by his

being extraordinary; one would be too small to be noticed, another

too tall to be seen; one was apparently paralysed in a hospital and

got out of the window at night—”

Joan looked across at him with a troubled expression in her honest

brown eyes.

“Please, Mr. Pond, do tell us what you mean by a man being too tall

to be seen.”

Gahagan’s spirits, already high, soared into laughter and light

improvisation.

“These things do happen, my dear girl,” he said. “I can throw out

a thousand instances that would meet the case. Take, for example,

the case of my unfortunate friends the Balham-Browns who lived at

Muswell Hill. Mr. Balham-Brown had just come home from the office

(of the Imperial and International Lead-Piping Company) and was

exercising the lawn-mower in the usual manner, when he noticed in

the grass a growth not green but reddish-brown and resembling

animal hair; nay, even human hair. My friend Mr. Pond, whose

private collection of Giant Whiskers is unrivalled (except, of

course, by the unique collection of Sir Samuel Snodd), was able to

identify it with the long hair of the Anakin; and judged by its

vigour, the son of Anak was buried but still alive. With the

spitefulness of the scientific world, Professor Pooter countered

with the theory that Jupiter buried the Titans, one under Etna,

another under Ossa, and a third under Muswell Hill. Anyhow, the

villa of my ill-fated friends the Balham-Browns was ruined, and the

whole suburb overturned as by an earthquake, in order to excavate

the monster. When his head alone emerged, it was like a colossal

sphinx; and Mrs. Balham-Brown complained to the authorities that

the face frightened her, because it was too large. Mr. Pond, who

happened to be passing at the moment, immediately produced a

paradox (of which he always carries a small supply) and said that,

on the contrary, they would soon find that the face was too small.

To cut a long story short—”

“Or a tall story shorter,” said Joan in a trenchant manner.

“When the Titan was extricated, he was so tall that by the common

converging laws of perspective, his head in the remote sky was a

mere dot. It was impossible to discern or recall one feature of

that old familiar face. He strode away; and fortunately decided to

walk across the Atlantic, where even he was apparently submerged.

It is believed that the unfortunate creature was going to give

lectures in America; driven by that mysterious instinct which leads

any person who is notorious for any reason to adopt that course.”

“Well, have you done?” demanded Joan. “We know all about you and

your yarns; and they don’t mean anything. But when Mr. Pond says

that somebody was too tall to be seen, he does mean something. And

what can he possibly mean?”

“Well,” said Mr. Pond, coughing slightly, “it was really a part of

the story to which I was alluding just now. I did not notice

anything odd about the expression when I used it; but I recognize,

on second thought, that it is, perhaps, a phrase requiring

explanation.” And he proceeded, in his slightly pedantic way, to

narrate the story which is now retold here.

It all happened in a fashionable watering-place, which was also a

famous seaport, and, therefore, naturally a place of concentration

for all the vigilance against spies, whether official or amateur.

Sir Hubert Wotton was in general charge of the district, but Mr.

Pond was in more practical though private occupation of the town,

watching events from a narrow house in a back street, an upper room

of which had been unobtrusively turned into an office; and he had

two assistants under him; a sturdy and very silent young man named

Butt, bull-necked and broad-shouldered, but quite short; and a much

taller and more talkative and elegant government-office clerk named

Travers, but referred to by nearly everybody as Arthur. The

stalwart Butt commonly occupied a desk on the ground floor,

watching the door and anyone who entered it; while Arthur Travers

worked in the office upstairs, where there were some very valuable

State papers, including the only plan of the mines in the harbour.

Mr. Pond himself always spent several hours in the office, but he

had more occasion than the others to pay visits in the town, and

had a general grasp of the neighbourhood. It was a very shabby

neighbourhood; indeed, it consisted of a few genteel, old-fashioned

houses, now mostly shuttered and empty, standing on the very edge

of a sort of slum of small houses, at that time riddled with what

is called Unrest in a degree very dangerous, especially in time of

war. Immediately outside his door, he found but few things that

could be called features in that featureless street; but there was

an old curiosity shop opposite, with a display of ancient Asiatic

weapons; and there was Mrs. Hartog-Haggard next door, more alarming

than all the weapons of the world.

Mrs. Hartog-Haggard was one of those persons, to be found here and

there, who look like the conventional caricature of the spinster,

though they are in fact excellent mothers of families. Rather in

the same way, she looked very like the sort of lady who is horribly

in earnest at Pacifist meetings; yet, as a matter of fact, she was

passionately patriotic, not to say militaristic. And, indeed, it

is often true that those two extremes lend themselves to the same

sort of fluent fanaticism. Poor Mr. Pond had reason to remember

the woeful day when he first saw her angular and agitated figure

darkening his doorway as she entered out of the street, peering

suspiciously through her curious square spectacles. There was

apparently some slight delay about her entrance; some repairs were

being done to the porch and some loose board or pole was not

removed sufficiently promptly from her path: was, in fact, as she

declared, removed reluctantly and in a grumbling spirit by the

workmen employed on the job; and by the time she had reached the

responsible official, a theory had fully formed and hardened in her

mind.

“That man is a SOCIALIST, Mr. Pond,” she declared in the ear of

that unfortunate functionary. “I heard him with my own ears mutter

something about what his Trade Union would say. What is he doing

so near to your office?”

“We must distinguish,” said Mr. Pond. “A Trade Unionist, even a

militant Trade Unionist, is not necessarily a Socialist; a

Socialist is not necessarily a Pacifist, still less a Pro-German.

In my opinion, the chief S.D.F. men are the most extreme Marxians

in England; and they are all out for the Allies. One of the Dock

Strike leaders is in a mood to make recruiting speeches all over

the Empire.”

“I’m sure he’s not English; he doesn’t look a bit English,” said

the lady, still thinking of her wicked proletarian without.

“Thank you, Mrs. Hartog-Haggard,” said Pond, patiently. “I will

certainly make a note of your warning and see that inquiries are

made about it.”

And so he did, with the laborious precision of one who could not

leave any loophole unguarded. Certainly the man did not look very

English; though perhaps rather Scandinavian than German. His name

was Peterson: it was possible that it was really Petersen. But

that was not all. Mr. Pond had learned the last lesson of the wise

man: that the fool is sometimes right.

He soon forgot the incident in the details of his work; and next

day it was with a start that he looked up from his desk, or rather

from Mr. Butt’s desk which he was using at the moment, and saw once

again the patriotic lady hovering like an avenging shadow in the

doorway. This time she glided swiftly in, unchecked by any

Socialist barricade, and warned him that she had news of the most

terrible kind. She seemed to have forgotten all about her last

suspicions; and, in truth, her new ones were naturally more

important to her. This time she had warmed the viper on her own

hearth. She had suddenly become conscious of the existence of her

own German governess, whom she had never especially noticed before.

Pond himself had noticed the alien in question with rather more

attention; he had seen her, a dumpy lady with pale hair, returning

with Mrs. Hartog-Haggard’s three little girls and one little boy

from the pantomime of Puss-in-Boots that was being performed on the

pier. He had even heard her instructing her charges, and saying

something educational about a folk-tale; and had smiled faintly at

that touch of Teutonic pedantry that talks about a folk-tale when

we would talk about a fairy-tale. But he knew a good deal about

the lady; and saw no reason to move in the matter.

“She shuts herself up for hours in her room and won’t come out,”

Mrs. Hartog-Haggard was already breathing hoarsely in his ear. “Do

you think she is signalling, or does she climb down the fire-

escape? What do you think it means, Mr. Pond?”

“Hysterics,” said Mr. Pond. “What, do you think the poor lady

cannot be hysterical, because she does not scream the house down?

But any doctor will tell you that hysteria is mostly secretive and

silent. And there really is a vein of hysteria in a great many of

the Germans; it is at the very opposite extreme to the external

excitability of the Latins. No, madam, I do not think she is

climbing down the fire-escape. I think she is saying that her

pupils do not love her, and thinking about weltschmerz and suicide.

And really, poor woman, she is in a very hard position.”

“She won’t come to family prayers,” continued the patriotic matron,

not to be turned from her course, “because we pray for a British

victory.”

“You had better pray,” said Mr. Pond, “for all the unhappy

Englishwomen stranded in Germany by poverty or duty or dependence.

If she loves her native land, it only shows she is a human being.

If she expresses it by ostentatious absences or sulks or banging

doors, that may show she is too much of a German. It also shows

she is not much of a German spy.”

Here again, however, Mr. Pond was careful not to ignore or entirely

despise the warning; he kept an eye on the German governess, and

even engaged that learned lady in talk upon some trivial pretext—

if anything she touched could remain trivial.

“Your study of our national drama,” he said gravely, “must

sometimes recall to you the greatest and noblest work that ever

came out of Germany.”

“You refer to Goethe’s Faust, I presume,” she replied.

“I refer to Grimm’s Fairy-Tales,” said Mr. Pond. “I fear I have

forgotten for the moment whether the story we call Puss-in-Boots

exists in Grimm’s collection in the same form; but I am pretty

certain there is some variant of it. It always seems to me about

the best story in the world.”

The German governess obliged him with a short lecture on the

parallelism of folk-lore; and Pond could not help feeling faintly

amused at the idea of this ethnological and scientific treatment of

a folk-tale which had just been presented on the pier by Miss Patsy

Pickles, in lights and various other embellishments, supported by

that world-famed comedian who called himself Alberto Tizzi and was

born in the Blackfriars Road.

When he returned to his office at twilight, and, turning, beheld

the figure of Mrs. Hartog-Haggard again hovering without, Mr. Pond

began to think he was in a nightmare. He wondered wildly whether

she had drawn some dark conclusions from his own meeting with the

Teutonic teacher of youth. Perhaps he, Mr. Pond, was a German spy,

too. But he ought to have known his neighbour better; for when

Mrs. Hartog-Haggard spoke she had once again forgotten, for the

moment, her last cause of complaint. But she was more excited than

ever; she ducked under the frame of scaffolding and darted into the

room, crying out as she came:

“Mr. Pond, do you know what is right opposite your own house?”

“Well, I think so,” said Mr. Pond, doubtfully, “more or less.”

“I never read the name over the shop before!” cried the lady. “You

know it is all dark and dirty and obliterated—that curiosity shop,

I mean; with all the spears and daggers. Think of the impudence of

the man! He’s actually written up his name there: ‘C. Schiller.’”

“He’s written up C. Schiller; I’m not so sure he’s written up his

name,” said Mr. Pond.

“Do you mean,” she cried, “that you actually know he goes by two

names? Why, that makes it worse than ever!”

“Well,” said Mr. Pond, rising suddenly, and with a curtness that

cut all his own courtesy, “I’ll see what I can do about it.”

And for the third time did Mr. Pond take some steps to verify the

Hartog-Haggard revelations. He took the ten or twelve steps

necessary to take him across the road and into the shop of C.

Schiller, amid all the shining sabres and yataghans. It was a very

peaceable-looking person who waited behind all this array of arms;

not to say a rather smooth and sleek one; and Pond, leaning across

the counter, addressed him in a low and confidential voice.

“Why the dickens do you people do it? It will be more than half

your own fault if there’s a row of some kind and a Jingo mob comes

here and breaks your windows for your absurd German name. I know

very well this is no quarrel of yours. I am well aware,” Mr. Pond

continued with an earnest gaze, “that you never invaded Belgium. I

am fully conscious that your national tastes do not lie in that

direction. I know you had nothing to do with burning the Louvain

Library or sinking the Lusitania. Then why the devil can’t you say

so? Why can’t you call yourself Levy, like your fathers before you—

your fathers who go back to the most ancient priesthood of the

world? And you’ll get into trouble with the Germans, too, some

day, if you go about calling yourself Schiller. You might as well

go and live in Stratford-on-Avon and call yourself Shakespeare.”

“There’th a lot of prejudith againth my rathe,” said the warden of

the armoury.

“There’ll be a lot more, unless you take my advice,” said Mr. Pond

with unusual brevity; and left the shop to return to the office.

The square figure of Mr. Butt, who was sitting at the desk looking

towards the doorway, rose at his entrance; but Pond waved him to

his seat again and, lighting a cigarette, began to moon about the

room in a rather moody fashion. He did not believe that there was

anything very much in any of the three avenues of suspicion that

had been opened to him; though he owned that there were indirect

possibilities about the last. Mr. Levy was certainly not a German;

and it was very improbable that he was a real enthusiast for

Germany; but it was not altogether impossible to suppose, in the

tangle and distraction of all the modern international muddle, that

he might be some sort of tool, conscious or unconscious, of a real

German conspiracy. So long as that was possible, he must be

watched. Mr. Pond was very glad that Mr. Levy lived in the shop

exactly opposite.

Indeed, he found himself gazing across the street in the gathering

dusk with feelings which he found it hard to analyse. He could

still see the shop, with its pattern of queer, archaic weapons,

through the frame of the last few poles left in the low scaffolding

round the porch; for the workmen’s business had been entirely

limited to the porch itself and the props were mostly cleared away,

the work being practically over; but there was just enough

suggestion of a cluster or network of lines to confuse the prospect

at that very confusing turn of the twilight. Once he fancied he

saw something flicker behind them, as if a shadow had shifted; and

there arose within him the terror of Mrs. Hartog-Haggard, which is

the terror of boredom and a sort of paralysed impatience, one of

the worst of the woes of life.

Then he saw that the shifting shadow must have been produced by the

fact that the lights had been turned up in the shop opposite; and

he saw again, and now much more clearly, the queer outline of all

those alien Asiatic weapons, the crooked darts and monstrous

missiles, the swords with a horrid resemblance to hooks or the

blades that bent back and forth like snakes of iron… . He

became dreamily conscious of the chasm between Christendom and that

great other half of human civilization; so dreamily that he hardly

knew which was a torture implement and which was a tool. Whether

the thought was mingled with his own belief that he was fighting a

barbarism at heart as hostile, or whether he had caught a whiff of

the strange smell of the East from that apparently harmless human

accident who kept the shop, he could hardly be certain himself; but

he felt the peculiar oppression of his work as he had never felt it

before.

Then he shook himself awake, telling himself sharply that his

business was working and not worrying about the atmosphere of the

work; and that he should be ashamed to idle when his two

subordinates were still busy, Butt behind him, and Travers in the

office above. He was all the more surprised, when he turned

sharply around, to find that Butt was not working at all; but, like

himself, was staring, not to say glaring, as in a congested

mystification, into the twilight. Butt was commonly the most calm

and prosaic of subordinates; but the look on his face was quite

enough to prove that something was really the matter.

“Is anything bothering you?” asked Pond, in a gentle voice which

people found very encouraging.

“Yes, sir,” said Mr. Butt. “I’m bothering about whether I’m going

to be a beast or not. It’s a beastly caddish thing to say a word,

or hint a word, against your comrades or anybody connected with

them. But after all—well, sir, there is the country, isn’t

there?”

“There is certainly the country,” said Mr. Pond, very seriously.

“Well,” Butt blurted out at last, “I’m not a bit comfortable about

Arthur.”

Then, after a sort of gasp, he tried again: “At least, it isn’t so

much Arthur as Arthur’s … what Arthur’s doing. It makes it all

the nastier to have put it like that. But you know he got engaged

last week. Have you met his fiancée, sir?”

“I have not yet had the honour,” replied Pond, in his punctilious

way.

“Well, sir, Arthur brought her in here to-day while you were out;

he’d just taken her to the pantomime of Puss-in-Boots on the pier,

and they were laughing like anything. Of course, that’s quite all

right; it was his off time; but it seemed to me it wasn’t quite all

right that she walked straight upstairs without any invitation,

even from him, to the private office where we don’t allow visitors

to go. Of course, that’s about the only possible case where I

could hardly prevent it. In the ordinary way, we’re perfectly

safe; I mean the documents are perfectly safe. There’s only one

door, and you or I are always sitting bang in front of it; and

there’s only one staircase, and nobody uses it but we three. Of

course, she might have done it in all innocence; that’s what made

it seem quite too ghastly to snub her. And yet… . Well, she’s

a very nice-looking girl, and no doubt a very nice girl; but

somehow that’s just the one word that wouldn’t jump to my mind

about her—innocence.”

“Why, what sort of a girl is she?” asked Pond.

“Well,” said Mr. Butt, gloomily seeking words, “we all know that

making-up and even dyeing your hair doesn’t mean what it once did;

lots of women do it who are perfectly decent; but not those who

are—well, utterly inexperienced. It seemed to me that, while she

might be perfectly honest, she WOULD know very decidedly whether a

thing is done or not.”

“If she is engaged to him,” said Pond, with a rather unusual

severity, “she must know that he is here on highly confidential

work, and she must be as anxious to protect his honour as we are.

I’m afraid that I shall have to ask you for some sort of

description.”

“Well,” said Butt, “she’s very tall and elegant, or … no,

elegant is exactly the word. She has beautiful golden hair—very

beautiful golden hair—and very beautiful long dark eyes that make

it look rather like a gilded wig. She has high cheekbones, not in

the way that Scotch girls have, but somehow as if it were part of

the shape of the skull; and though she’s not at all long in the

tooth, in any sense, her teeth are just a little to the fore.”

“Did he meet her in Besançon, near Belfort?”

“Pretty rum you should say that,” said Butt, miserably; “because he

did.”

Mr. Pond received the news in silence.

“I hope, sir, you won’t assume anything against Arthur,” said Butt,

huskily. “I’m sure I’d do anything to clear him of any—”

As he spoke, the ceiling above them shook with a thud like thunder;

then there was a sound of scampering feet; and then utter

stillness. No one acquainted with Mr. Pond’s usual process of

ambulation could have believed that he flew up the staircase as he

did just then.

They flung open the door, and they saw all that was to be seen.

All that was to be seen was Arthur Travers stretched out face

downwards on the ground, and between his shoulder-blades stood out

the very long hilt of a very strange-looking sword. Butt

impetuously laid hold of it, and was startled to find that it was

sunk so deep in the corpse and the carpeted floor that he could not

have plucked it out without the most violent muscular effort. Pond

had already touched the wrist and felt the rigidity of the muscles

and he waved his subordinate away.

“I am sorry to say that our friend is certainly dead,” he said

steadily. “In that case, you had better not touch things till they

can be properly examined.” Then, looking at Butt very solemnly, he

added:

“You said you would do anything to clear him. One thing is

certain: that he is quite cleared.”

Pond then walked in silence to the desk, which contained the secret

drawer and the secret plan of the harbour. He only compressed his

lips when he saw that the drawer was empty.

Pond walked to the telephone and issued orders to about six

different people. He did about twenty things, but he did not speak

again for about three-quarters of an hour. It was only about the

same time that the stunned and bewildered Butt stumbled into

speech.

“I simply can’t make head or tail of anything. That woman had

gone; and, besides, no woman could have nailed him to the floor

like that.”

“And with such an extraordinary nail,” said Pond, and was silent

once more.

And indeed the riddle revolved more and more on the one thing that

thief and murderer had left behind him: the enormous misshapen

weapon. It was not difficult to guess why he had left it behind;

it was so difficult to tug out of the floor that he probably had no

time to try effectually, hearing Pond clattering up the stairs; he

thought it wiser to escape somehow, presumably through the window.

But about the nature of the thing itself it was hard to say

anything, for it seemed quite abnormal. It was as long as a

claymore; yet it was not upon the pattern of any known sword. It

had no guard or pommel of any kind. The hilt was as long as the

blade; the blade was twice as broad as the hilt; at least, at its

base, whence it tapered to a point in a sort of right-angled

triangle, only the outer edge or hypotenuse being sharpened. Pond

gazed musingly at this uncouth weapon, which was made very rudely

of iron and wood painted with garish colours; and his thoughts

crept slowly back to that shop across the road that was hung with

strange and savage weapons. Yet this seemed to be in a somewhat

cruder and gaudier style. Mr. Schiller-Levy naturally denied all

knowledge of it, which he would presumably have done in any case;

but what was much more cogent, all the real authorities on such

barbaric or Oriental arms said that they had never seen such a

thing before.

Touching many other things, the darkness began to thin away to a

somewhat dreary dawn. It was ascertained that poor Arthur’s

equivocal fiancée had indeed fled; very possibly in company with

the missing plan. She was known by this time to be a woman quite

capable of stealing a document or even stabbing a man. But it was

doubtful whether any woman was capable of stabbing a man, with that

huge and heavy and clumsy instrument, so as to fix him to the

floor; and quite impossible to imagine why she should select it for

the purpose.

“It would all be as clear as death,” said Mr. Butt, bitterly,

“except for that lumbering, long-hilted short-sword, or whatever it

is. It never was in Levy’s shop. It never was in Asia or Africa

or any of the tribes the learned jossers tell us about. It’s the

real remaining mystery of the whole thing.”

Mr. Pond seemed to be waking up slowly from a trance of hours or

days.

“Oh, THAT,” he said, “that’s the only thing about it I’m really

beginning to understand.”

It has been hinted, with every delicacy, we may hope, that the

attitude of Mr. Pond towards the visits of Mrs. Hartog-Haggard was,

perhaps, rather passive than receptive; that he did not look

forward to them as pants the hart for cooling streams; and that for

him they rather resembled getting into hot water. It is all the

more worthy of record that, on the last occasion of her bringing

him a new tale of woe, he actually leapt to his feet with an air of

excitement and even of triumph. He had been right in his

premonitions about the wisdom of folly; and the triumph was truly

the triumph of the fool. Mrs. Hartog-Haggard gave him the clue

after all.

She darted in under the scaffolding by the doorway, the same dark

and almost antic figure. Full of the Cause, she was utterly

oblivious of such trifles as the murder of his friend. She had now

reverted to her original disapproval of her own governess. She had

altered nothing, except all her reasons for disapproving of her

governess. On the former occasion she had appeared to claim the

fairy-tale used for pantomimes as exclusively English and part of

the healthy innocence of the stately homes of England. Now she was

denouncing the German woman for taking the children to the

pantomime at all; regarding it as a ruse for filling them with the

gruesome tales of Grimm and the terrors of the barbaric forest.

“They’re SENT to do that,” she repeated in the fierce, confidential

voice she used in such cases. “They’re sent here to undermine all

our children’s nerves and minds. Could any other nation be such

fiends, Mr. Pond? She’s been poisoning their poor little minds

with horrors about magicians and magic cats; and now the worst has

happened, as I knew it would. Well—YOU haven’t done anything to

stop it; and my life is simply ruined. My three girls are all

twittering with terror; and my boy is mad.”

The symptoms of Mr. Pond were still mainly those of fatigue; and

she rapped out a repetition.

“He is MAD, I tell you, Mr. Pond; he is actually SEEING things out

of those horrible German fairy-tales; says he saw a giant with a

great knife walking through the town by moonlight … a GIANT,

Mr. Pond.”

Mr. Pond staggered to his feet and for once really goggled and

gulped like a fish. Mrs. Hartog-Haggard watched him with wild

eyes, intermittently exclaiming: “Have you no word of consolation

for a mother?”

Mr. Pond abruptly controlled himself and managed to recapture, at

least, a hazy courtesy.

“Yes, madam,” he said. “I have the best possible consolation for a

mother. Your son is not mad.”

He looked more judicial, and even severe, when he next sat in

consultation with Mr. Butt, Sir Hubert Wotton, and Inspector Grote,

the leading detective of the district.

“What it comes to is this,” said Mr. Pond, very sternly: “that you

do not really know the story of Puss-in-Boots. And they talk about

this as an epoch of Education.”

“Oh, I know it’s about a clever cat and all the rest of it,” said

Butt, vaguely. “A cat that helps its master to get things—”

The Inspector smote his knee with a smack that rang through the

office.

“A cat burglar!” he cried. “So that’s what you mean. I fancied at

first there was something wrong about that bit of scaffolding round

the door; but I soon saw it was far too low and small for anybody

to climb up to the window by it. But, of course, if we’re talking

about a really clever cat burglar, there’s always some chance that—”

“Pardon me,” said Mr. Pond, “does a cat burglar, or for that matter

any burglar, any more than any cat, load himself with a gigantic

knife rather bigger than a garden spade? Nobody carries a gigantic

knife except a giant. This crime was committed by a giant.”

They all stared at him; but he resumed with the same air of frigid

rebuke:

“What I remark upon, what I regret and regard as symptomatic of

serious intellectual decay, is that you apparently do not know that

the story of Puss-in-Boots includes a giant. He is also a

magician; but he is always depicted, in pictures and pantomimes, as

an ogre with a large knife. Signor Alberto Tizzi, that somewhat

dubious foreign artist, enacts the part on the pier by the usual

expedient of walking on very high stilts, covered by very long

trousers. But he sometimes walks about on the stilts and dispenses

with the trousers; taking a walk through the almost entirely

deserted streets at night. Just round here, especially, the

chances are against his being even seen; all the big houses are

shut up, except ours and Mrs. Hartog-Haggard’s, which only looks on

the street through a landing window; through which her little boy

(probably in his nightgown) peered and beheld a real ogre, with a

great gory knife, and, perhaps, a great grinning mask, walking

majestically under the moon—rather a fine sight to put among the

memories of childhood. For the rest, all the poor houses are low

houses of one storey; and the people would see nothing but his

legs, or rather his stilts, even if they did look out; and they

probably didn’t. The really native poor, in these seaport towns,

have country habits; and generally go to bed early. But it

wouldn’t really have been fatal to his plans even if he had been

seen. He was a recognized public entertainer, dressed in his

recognized part; and there is nothing illegal in walking about on

stilts. The really clever part of it was the trick by which he

could leave the stilts standing, and climb out of them on to any

ledge or roof or other upper level. So he left them standing

outside our doorway, among the poles of the little scaffolding,

while he climbed in at the upper window and killed poor Travers.”

“If you are sure of this,” cried Sir Hubert Wotton, starting to his

feet hastily, “you ought to act on it at once!”

“I did act on it at once,” replied Pond, with a slight sigh. “This

morning two or three clowns with white faces were going about on

stilts on the beach, distributing leaflets of the pantomime. One

of them was arrested and found to be Signor Tizzi. He was also

found, I am glad to say, to be still in possession of the plans.”

But he sighed again.

“For after all,” as Mr. Pond observed, in telling the tale long

after, “though we did manage to save the secret plans, the incident

was much more of a tragedy than a triumph. And what I most

intensely disliked about the tragedy was the irony—what I believe

is called the tragic irony, or, alternatively, the Greek irony. We

felt perfectly certain we were guarding the only entrance to the

office, because we sat staring at the street between two little

clusters of sticks, which we knew were a temporary part of the

furniture. We didn’t count the sticks; we didn’t know when there

happened to be two more wooden poles standing up among the other

wooden poles. We certainly had no notion of what was on top of

those two poles; nor would our fancy have easily entertained the

idea that it was a pantomime giant. We ought to have seen him—

only,” said Mr. Pond, ending, as he had begun, with an apologetic

little laugh, “he was too tall to be seen.”

VIII. A Tall Story

THE THREE HORSEMEN OF APOCALYPSE

The curious and sometimes creepy effect which Mr. Pond produced

upon me, despite his commonplace courtesy and dapper decorum, was

possibly connected with some memories of childhood; and the vague

verbal association of his name. He was a Government official who

was an old friend of my father; and I fancy my infantile

imagination had somehow mixed up the name of Mr. Pond with the pond

in the garden. When one came to think of it, he was curiously like

the pond in the garden. He was so quiet at all normal times, so

neat in shape and so shiny, so to speak, in his ordinary

reflections of earth and sky and the common daylight. And yet I

knew there were some queer things in the pond in the garden. Once

in a hundred times, on one or two days during the whole year, the

pond would look oddly different; or there would come a flitting

shadow or a flash in its flat serenity; and a fish or a frog or

some more grotesque creature would show itself to the sky. And I

knew there were monsters in Mr. Pond also: monsters in his mind

which rose only for a moment to the surface and sank again. They

took the form of monstrous remarks, in the middle of all his mild

and rational remarks. Some people thought he had suddenly gone mad

in the midst of his sanest conversation. But even they had to

admit that he must have suddenly gone sane again.

Perhaps, again, this foolish fantasy was fixed in the youthful mind

because, at certain moments, Mr. Pond looked rather like a fish

himself. His manners were not only quite polite but quite

conventional; his very gestures were conventional, with the

exception of one occasional trick of plucking at his pointed beard

which seemed to come on him chiefly when he was at last forced to

be serious about one of his strange and random statements. At such

moments he would stare owlishly in front of him and pull his beard,

which had a comic effect of pulling his mouth open, as if it were

the mouth of a puppet with hairs for wires. This odd, occasional

opening and shutting of his mouth, without speech, had quite a

startling similarity to the slow gaping and gulping of a fish. But

it never lasted for more than a few seconds, during which, I

suppose, he swallowed the unwelcome proposal of explaining what on

earth he meant.

He was talking quite quietly one day to Sir Hubert Wotton, the well-

known diplomatist; they were seated under gaily-striped tents or

giant parasols in our own garden, and gazing towards the pond which

I had perversely associated with him. They happened to be talking

about a part of the world that both of them knew well, and very few

people in Western Europe at all: the vast flats fading into fens

and swamps that stretch across Pomerania and Poland and Russia and

the rest; right away, for all I know, into the Siberian deserts.

And Mr. Pond recalled that, across a region where the swamps are

deepest and intersected by pools and sluggish rivers, there runs a

single road raised on a high causeway with steep and sloping sides:

a straight path safe enough for the ordinary pedestrian, but barely

broad enough for two horsemen to ride abreast. That is the

beginning of the story.

It concerned a time not very long ago, but a time in which horsemen

were still used much more than they are at present, though already

rather less as fighters than as couriers. Suffice it to say that

it was in one of the many wars that have laid waste that part of

the world—in so far as it is possible to lay waste such a

wilderness. Inevitably it involved the pressure of the Prussian

system on the nation of the Poles, but beyond that it is not

necessary to expound the politics of the matter, or discuss its

rights and wrongs here. Let us merely say, more lightly, that Mr.

Pond amused the company with a riddle.

“I expect you remember hearing,” said Pond, “of all the excitement

there was about Paul Petrowski, the poet from Cracow, who did two

things rather dangerous in those days: moving from Cracow and going

to live in Poznan; and trying to combine being a poet with being a

patriot. The town he was living in was held at the moment by the

Prussians; it was situated exactly at the eastern end of the long

causeway; the Prussian command having naturally taken care to hold

the bridgehead of such a solitary bridge across such a sea of

swamps. But their base for that particular operation was at the

western end of the causeway; the celebrated Marshal Von Grock was

in general command; and, as it happened, his own old regiment,

which was still his favourite regiment, the White Hussars, was

posted nearest to the beginning of the great embanked road. Of

course, everything was spick and span, down to every detail of the

wonderful white uniforms, with the flame-coloured baldrick slung

across them; for this was just before the universal use of colours

like mud and clay for all the uniforms in the world. I don’t blame

them for that; I sometimes feel the old epoch of heraldry was a

finer thing than all that epoch of imitative colouring, that came

in with natural history and the worship of chameleons and beetles.

Anyhow, this crack regiment of cavalry in the Prussian service

still wore its own uniform; and, as you will see, that was another

element in the fiasco. But it wasn’t only the uniforms; it was the

uniformity. The whole thing went wrong because the discipline was

too good. Grock’s soldiers obeyed him too well; so he simply

couldn’t do a thing he wanted.”

“I suppose that’s a paradox,” said Wotton, heaving a sigh. “Of

course, it’s very clever and all that; but really, it’s all

nonsense, isn’t it? Oh, I know people say in a general way that

there’s too much discipline in the German army. But you can’t have

too much discipline in an army.”

“But I don’t say it in a general way,” said Pond plaintively. “I

say it in a particular way, about this particular case. Grock

failed because his soldiers obeyed him. Of course, if ONE of his

soldiers had obeyed him, it wouldn’t have been so bad. But when

TWO of his soldiers obeyed him—why, really, the poor old devil had

no chance.”

Wotton laughed in a guttural fashion. “I’m glad to hear your new

military theory. You’d allow one soldier in a regiment to obey

orders; but two soldiers obeying orders strikes you as carrying

Prussian discipline a bit too far.”

“I haven’t got any military theory. I’m talking about a military

fact,” replied Mr. Pond placidly. “It is a military fact that

Grock failed, because two of his soldiers obeyed him. It is a

military fact that he might have succeeded, if one of them had

disobeyed him. You can make up what theories you like about it

afterwards.”

“I don’t go in much for theories myself,” said Wotton rather

stiffly, as if he had been touched by a trivial insult.

At this moment could be seen striding across the sun-chequered

lawn, the large and swaggering figure of Captain Gahagan, the

highly incongruous friend and admirer of little Mr. Pond. He had a

flaming flower in his buttonhole and a grey top-hat slightly

slanted upon his ginger-haired head; and he walked with a swagger

that seemed to come out of an older period of dandies and

duellists, though he himself was comparatively young. So long as

his tall, broad-shouldered figure was merely framed against the

sunlight, he looked like the embodiment of all arrogance. When he

came and sat down, with the sun on his face, there was a sudden

contradiction of all this in his very soft brown eyes, which looked

sad and even a little anxious.

Mr. Pond, interrupting his monologue, was almost in a twitter of

apologies: “I’m afraid I’m talking too much, as usual; the truth

is I was talking about that poet, Petrowski, who was nearly

executed in Poznan—quite a long time ago. The military

authorities on the spot hesitated and were going to let him go,

unless they had direct orders from Marshal Von Grock or higher; but

Marshal Von Grock was quite determined on the poet’s death; and

sent orders for his execution that very evening. A reprieve was

sent afterwards to save him; but as the man carrying the reprieve

died on the way, the prisoner was released, after all.”

“But as—” repeated Wotton mechanically.

“The man carrying the REPRIEVE,” added Gahagan somewhat

sarcastically.

“Died on the way,” muttered Wotton.

“Why then, of course, the prisoner was released,” observed Gahagan

in a loud and cheerful voice. “All as clear as clear can be. Tell

us another of those stories, Grandpapa.”

“It’s a perfectly true story,” protested Pond, “and it happened

exactly as I say. It isn’t any paradox or anything like that.

Only, of course, you have to know the story to see how simple it

is.”

“Yes,” agreed Gahagan. “I think I should have to know the story,

before realizing how simple it is.”

“Better tell us the story and have done with it,” said Wotton

shortly.

Paul Petrowski was one of those utterly unpractical men who are of

prodigious importance in practical politics. His power lay in the

fact that he was a national poet but an international singer. That

is, he happened to have a very fine and powerful voice, with which

he sang his own patriotic songs in half the concert halls of the

world. At home, of course, he was a torch and trumpet of

revolutionary hopes, especially then, in the sort of international

crisis in which practical politicians disappear, and their place is

taken by men either more or less practical than themselves. For

the true idealist and the real realist have at least the love of

action in common. And the practical politician thrives by offering

practical objections to any action. What the idealist does may be

unworkable, and what the man of action does may be unscrupulous;

but in neither trade can a man win a reputation by doing nothing.

It is odd that these two extreme types stood at the two extreme

ends of that one ridge and road among the marshes—the Polish poet

a prisoner in the town at one end, the Prussian soldier a commander

in the camp at the other.

For Marshal Von Grock was a true Prussian, not only entirely

practical but entirely prosaic. He had never read a line of poetry

himself; but he was no fool. He had the sense of reality which

belongs to soldiers; and it prevented him from falling into the

asinine error of the practical politician. He did not scoff at

visions; he only hated them. He knew that a poet or a prophet

could be as dangerous as an army. And he was resolved that the

poet should die. It was his one compliment to poetry; and it was

sincere.

He was at the moment sitting at a table in his tent; the spiked

helmet that he always wore in public was lying in front of him; and

his massive head looked quite bald, though it was only closely

shaven. His whole face was also shaven; and had no covering but a

pair of very strong spectacles, which alone gave an enigmatic look

to his heavy and sagging visage. He turned to a Lieutenant

standing by, a German of the pale-haired and rather pudding-faced

variety, whose blue saucer-eyes were staring vacantly.

“Lieutenant Von Hocheimer,” he said, “did you say His Highness

would reach the camp to-night?”

“Seven forty-five, Marshal,” replied the Lieutenant, who seemed

rather reluctant to speak at all, like a large animal learning a

new trick of talking.

“Then there is just time,” said Grock, “to send you with that order

for execution, before he arrives. We must serve His Highness in

every way, but especially in saving him needless trouble. He will

be occupied enough reviewing the troops; see that everything is

placed at His Highness’s disposal. He will be leaving again for

the next outpost in an hour.”

The large Lieutenant seemed partially to come to life and made a

shadowy salute. “Of course, Marshal, we must all obey His

Highness.”

“I said we must all serve His Highness,” said the Marshal.

With a sharper movement than usual, he unhooked his heavy

spectacles and rapped them down upon the table. If the pale blue

eyes of the Lieutenant could have seen anything of the sort, or if

they could have opened any wider even if they had, they might as

well have opened wide enough at the transformation made by the

gesture. It was like the removal of an iron mask. An instant

before, Marshal Von Grock had looked uncommonly like a rhinoceros,

with his heavy folds of leathery cheek and jaw. Now he was a new

kind of monster: a rhinoceros with the eyes of an eagle. The bleak

blaze of his old eyes would have told almost anybody that he had

something within that was not merely heavy; at least, that there

was a part of him made of steel and not only of iron. For all men

live by a spirit, though it were an evil spirit, or one so strange

to the commonalty of Christian men that they hardly know whether it

be good or evil.

“I said we must all serve His Highness,” repeated Grock. “I will

speak more plainly, and say we must all save His Highness. Is it

not enough for our kings that they should be our gods? Is it not

enough for them to be served and saved? It is we who must do the

serving and saving.”

Marshal Von Grock seldom talked, or even thought, as more

theoretical people would count thinking. And it will generally be

found that men of his type, when they do happen to think aloud,

very much prefer to talk to the dog. They have even a certain

patronizing relish in using long words and elaborate arguments

before the dog. It would be unjust to compare Lieutenant Von

Hocheimer to a dog. It would be unjust to the dog, who is a much

more sensitive and vigilant creature. It would be truer to say

that Grock in one of his rare moments of reflection, had the

comfort and safety of feeling that he was reflecting aloud in the

presence of a cow or a cabbage.

“Again and again, in the history of our Royal House, the servant

has saved the master,” went on Grock, “and often got little but

kicks for it, from the outer world at least, which always whines

sentimentalism against the successful and the strong. But at least

we were successful and we were strong. They cursed Bismarck for

deceiving even his own master over the Ems telegram; but it made

that master the master of the world. Paris was taken; Austria

dethroned; and we were safe. To-night Paul Petrowski will be dead;

and we shall again be safe. That is why I am sending you with his

death-warrant at once. You understand that you are bearing the

order for Petrowski’s instant execution—and that you must remain

to see it obeyed?”

The inarticulate Hocheimer saluted; he could understand that all

right. And he had some qualities of a dog, after all: he was as

brave as a bulldog; and he could be faithful to the death.

“You must mount and ride at once,” went on Grock, “and see that

nothing delays or thwarts you. I know for a fact that fool Arnheim

is going to release Petrowski to-night, if no message comes. Make

all speed.”

And the Lieutenant again saluted and went out into the night; and

mounting one of the superb white chargers that were part of the

splendour of that splendid corps, began to ride along the high,

narrow road along the ridge, almost like the top of a wall, which

overlooked the dark horizon, the dim patterns and decaying colours

of those mighty marshes.

Almost as the last echoes of his horse’s hoofs died away along the

causeway, Von Grock rose and put on his helmet and his spectacles

and came to the door of his tent; but for another reason. The

chief men of his staff, in full dress, were already approaching

him; and all along the more distant lines there were the sounds of

ritual salutation and the shouting of orders. His Highness the

Prince had come.

His Highness the Prince was something of a contrast, at least in

externals, to the men around him; and, even in other things,

something of an exception in his world. He also wore a spiked

helmet, but that of another regiment, black with glints of blue

steel; and there was something half incongruous and half

imaginatively appropriate, in some antiquated way, in the

combination of that helmet with the long, dark, flowing beard, amid

all those shaven Prussians. As if in keeping with the long, dark,

flowing beard, he wore a long, dark, flowing cloak, blue with one

blazing star on it of the highest Royal Order; and under the blue

cloak he wore a black uniform. Though as German as any man, he was

a very different kind of German; and something in his proud but

abstracted face was consonant with the legend that the one true

passion of his life was music.

In truth, the grumbling Grock was inclined to connect with that

remote eccentricity the, to him, highly irritating and exasperating

fact that the Prince did not immediately proceed to the proper

review and reception by the troops, already drawn out in all the

labyrinthine parade of the military etiquette of their nation; but

plunged at once impatiently into the subject which Grock most

desired to see left alone: the subject of this infernal Pole, his

popularity and his peril; for the Prince had heard some of the

man’s songs sung in half the opera-houses of Europe.

“To talk of executing a man like that is madness,” said the Prince,

scowling under his black helmet. “He is not a common Pole. He is

a European institution. He would be deplored and deified by our

allies, by our friends, even by our fellow-Germans. Do you want to

be the mad women who murdered Orpheus?”

“Highness,” said the Marshal, “he would be deplored; but he would

be dead. He would be deified; but he would be dead. Whatever he

means to do, he would never do it. Whatever he is doing, he would

do no more. Death is the fact of all facts; and I am rather fond

of facts.”

“Do you know nothing of the world?” demanded the Prince.

“I care nothing for the world,” answered Grock, “beyond the last

black and white post of the Fatherland.”

“God in heaven,” cried His Highness, “you would have hanged Goethe

for a quarrel with Weimar!”

“For the safety of your Royal House,” answered Grock, “without one

instant’s hesitation.”

There was a short silence and the Prince said sharply and suddenly:

“What does this mean?”

“It means that I had not an instant’s hesitation,” replied the

Marshal steadily. “I have already myself sent orders for the

execution of Petrowski.”

The Prince rose like a great dark eagle, the swirl of his cloak

like the sweep of mighty wings; and all men knew that a wrath

beyond mere speech had made him a man of action. He did not even

speak to Von Grock; but talking across him, at the top of his

voice, called out to the second in command, General Von Voglen, a

stocky man with a square head, who had stood in the background as

motionless as a stone.

“Who has the best horse in your cavalry division, General? Who is

the best rider?”

“Arnold Von Schacht has a horse that might beat a racehorse,”

replied the General promptly. “And rides it as well as a jockey.

He is of the White Hussars.”

“Very well,” said the Prince, with the same new ring in his voice.

“Let him ride at once after the man with this mad message and stop

him. I will give him authority, which I think the distinguished

Marshal will not dispute. Bring me pen and ink.”

He sat down, shaking out the cloak, and they brought him writing

materials; and he wrote firmly and with a flourish the order,

overriding all other orders, for the reprieve and release of

Petrowski the Pole.

Then amid a dead silence, in the midst of which old Grock stood

with an unblinking stare like a stone idol of prehistoric times, he

swept out of the room, trailing his mantle and sabre. He was so

violently displeased that no man dared to remind him of the formal

reviewing of the troops. But Arnold Von Schacht, a curly-haired

active youth, looking more like a boy, but wearing more than one

medal on the white uniform of the Hussars, clicked his heels, and

received the folded paper from the Prince; then, striding out, he

sprang on his horse and flew along the high, narrow road like a

silver arrow or a shooting star.

The old Marshal went back slowly and calmly to his tent, slowly and

calmly removed his spiked helmet and his spectacles, and laid them

on the table as before. Then he called out to an orderly just

outside the tent; and bade him fetch Sergeant Schwartz of the White

Hussars immediately.

A minute later, there presented himself before the Marshal a gaunt

and wiry man, with a great scar across his jaw, rather dark for a

German, unless all his colours had been changed by years of smoke

and storm and bad weather. He saluted and stood stiffly at

attention, as the Marshal slowly raised his eyes to him. And vast

as was the abyss between the Imperial Marshal, with Generals under

him, and that one battered non-commissioned officer, it is true

that of all the men who have talked in this tale, these two men

alone looked and understood each other without words.

“Sergeant,” said the Marshal, curtly, “I have seen you twice

before. Once, I think, when you won the prize of the whole army

for marksmanship with the carbine.”

The sergeant saluted and said nothing.

“And once again,” went on Von Grock, “when you were questioned for

shooting that damned old woman who would not give us information

about the ambush. The incident caused considerable comment at the

time, even in some of our own circles. Influence, however, was

exerted on your side. My influence.”

The sergeant saluted again; and was still silent. The Marshal

continued to speak in a colourless but curiously candid way.

“His Highness the Prince has been misinformed and deceived on a

point essential to his own safety and that of the Fatherland.

Under this error, he has rashly sent a reprieve to the Pole

Petrowski, who is to be executed to-night. I repeat: who is to be

executed to-night. You must immediately ride after Von Schacht,

who carried the reprieve, and stop him.”

“I can hardly hope to overtake him, Marshal,” said Sergeant

Schwartz. “He has the swiftest horse in the regiment, and is the

finest rider.”

“I did not tell you to overtake him. I told you to stop him,” said

Grock. Then he spoke more slowly: “A man may often be stopped or

recalled by various signals: by shouting or shooting.” His voice

dragged still more ponderously, but without a pause. “The

discharge of a carbine might attract his attention.”

And then the dark sergeant saluted for the third time; and his grim

mouth was again shut tight.

“The world is changed,” said Grock, “not by what is said, or what

is blamed or praised, but by what is done. The world never

recovers from what is done. At this moment the killing of a man is

a thing that must be done.” He suddenly flashed his brilliant eyes

of steel at the other, and added: “I mean, of course, Petrowski.”

And Sergeant Schwartz smiled still more grimly; and he also,

lifting the flap of the tent, went out into the darkness and

mounted his horse and rode.

The last of the three riders was even less likely than the first to

indulge in imaginative ideas for their own sake. But because he

also was in some imperfect manner human, he could not but feel, on

such a night and such an errand, the oppressiveness of that inhuman

landscape. While he rode along that one abrupt ridge, there spread

out to infinity all round him something a myriad times more inhuman

than the sea. For a man could not swim in it, nor sail boats on

it, nor do anything human with it; he could only sink in it, and

practically without a struggle. The sergeant felt vaguely the

presence of some primordial slime that was neither solid nor liquid

nor capable of any form; and he felt its presence behind the forms

of all things.

He was atheist, like so many thousands of dull, clever men in

Northern Germany; but he was not that happier sort of pagan who can

see in human progress a natural flowering of the earth. That world

before him was not a field in which green or living things evolved

and developed and bore fruit; it was only an abyss in which all

living things would sink for ever as in a bottomless pit; and the

thought hardened him for all the strange duties he had to do in so

hateful a world. The grey-green blotches of flattened vegetation,

seen from above like a sprawling map, seemed more like the chart of

a disease than a development; and the land-locked pools might have

been of poison rather than water. He remembered some humanitarian

fuss or other about the poisoning of pools.

But the reflections of the sergeant, like most reflections of men

not normally reflective, had a root in some subconscious strain on

his nerves and his practical intelligence. The truth was that the

straight road before him was not only dreary, but seemed

interminably long. He would never have believed he could have

ridden so far without catching some distant glimpse of the man he

followed. Von Schacht must indeed have the fleetest of horses to

have got so far ahead already; for, after all, he had only started,

at whatever speed, within a comparatively short time. As Schwartz

had said, he hardly expected to overtake him; but a very realistic

sense of the distances involved had told him that he must very soon

come in sight of him. And then, just as despair was beginning to

descend and spread itself vaguely over the desolate landscape, he

saw him at last.

A white spot, which slightly, slowly, enlarged into something like

a white figure, appeared far ahead, riding furiously. It enlarged

to that extent because Schwartz managed a spurt of riding furiously

himself; but it was large enough to show the faint streak of orange

across the white uniform that marked the regiment of the Hussars.

The winner of the prize for shooting, in the whole army, had hit

the white of smaller targets than that.

He unslung his carbine; and a shock of unnatural noise shook up all

the wild fowl for miles upon the silent marshes. But Sergeant

Schwartz did not trouble about them. What interested him was that,

even at such a distance, he could see the straight, white figure

turn crooked and alter in shape, as if the man had suddenly grown

deformed. He was hanging like a humpback over the saddle; and

Schwartz, with his exact eye and long experience, was certain that

his victim was shot through the body; and almost certain that he

was shot through the heart. Then he brought the horse down with a

second shot; and the whole equestrian group heeled over and slipped

and slid and vanished in one white flash into the dark fenland

below.

The hard-headed sergeant was certain that his work was done. Hard-

headed men of his sort are generally very precise about what they

are doing; that is why they are so often quite wrong about what

they do. He had outraged the comradeship that is the soul of

armies; he had killed a gallant officer who was in the performance

of his duty; he had deceived and defied his sovereign and committed

a common murder without excuse of personal quarrel; but he had

obeyed his superior officer and he had helped to kill a Pole.

These two last facts for the moment filled his mind; and he rode

thoughtfully back again to make his report to Marshal Von Grock.

He had no doubts about the thoroughness of the work he had done.

The man carrying the reprieve was certainly dead; and even if by

some miracle he were only dying, he could not conceivably have

ridden his dead or dying horse to the town in time to prevent the

execution. No; on the whole it was much more practical and prudent

to get back under the wing of his protector, the author of the

desperate project. With his whole strength he leaned on the

strength of the great Marshal.

And truly the great Marshal had this greatness about him; that

after the monstrous thing he had done, or caused to be done, he

disdained to show any fear of facing the facts on the spot or the

compromising possibilities of keeping in touch with his tool. He

and the sergeant, indeed, an hour or so later, actually rode along

the ridge together, till they came to a particular place where the

Marshal dismounted, but bade the other ride on. He wished the

sergeant to go forward to the original goal of the riders, and see

if all was quiet in the town after the execution, or whether there

remained some danger from popular resentment.

“Is it here, then, Marshal?” asked the sergeant in a low voice. “I

fancied it was further on; but it’s a fact the infernal road seemed

to lengthen out like a nightmare.”

“It is here,” answered Grock, and swung himself heavily from saddle

and stirrup, and then went to the edge of the long parapet and

looked down.

The moon had risen over the marshes and gone up strengthening in

splendour and gleaming on dark waters and green scum; and in the

nearest clump of reeds, at the foot of the slope, there lay, as in

a sort of luminous and radiant ruin, all that was left of one of

era anche lui in qualche modo imperfetto umano, non poteva non sentire, in

una tale notte e una tale missione, l’oppressione di quel disumano

paesaggio. Mentre cavalcava lungo quell’unico brusco crinale, si stendeva

all’infinito tutt’intorno a lui qualcosa mille volte più disumano

del mare. Poiché un uomo non poteva nuotarvi, né farvi navigare barche,

né farci alcunché di umano; poteva soltanto affondarvi, e

praticamente senza lotta. Il sergente sentiva vagamente la

presenza di qualche fango primordiale che non era né solido né liquido

né capace di forma alcuna; e ne sentiva la presenza dietro le forme

di tutte le cose.

Era ateo, come tante migliaia di uomini ottusi e acuti nella

Germania settentrionale; ma non era quella specie più felice di pagano che sa

vedere nel progresso umano un naturale fiorire della terra. Quel mondo

davanti a lui non era un campo in cui cose verdi o viventi si evolvevano

e si sviluppavano e portavano frutto; era soltanto un abisso in cui tutte le

cose viventi sarebbero affondate per sempre come in un pozzo senza fondo; e il

pensiero lo induriva per tutti gli strani doveri che doveva compiere in un mondo

così odioso. Le chiazze grigio-verdi di vegetazione appiattita,

viste dall’alto come una mappa distesa, sembravano più la carta di

una malattia che di uno sviluppo; e gli stagni chiusi tra le terre potevano

essere stati di veleno anziché d’acqua. Ricordava qualche polemica umanitaria

o altro sull’avvelenamento degli stagni.

Ma le riflessioni del sergente, come la maggior parte delle riflessioni di uomini

non normalmente riflessivi, avevano radice in qualche subconscia tensione sui

suoi nervi e sulla sua intelligenza pratica. La verità era che la

diritta strada davanti a lui non era soltanto tetra, ma sembrava

interminabilmente lunga. Non avrebbe mai creduto di aver potuto

cavalcare così lontano senza cogliere qualche lontano barlume dell’uomo che

seguiva. Von Schacht doveva davvero avere il più veloce dei cavalli per

aver preso già tanto vantaggio; poiché, dopotutto, era partito soltanto,

a qualunque velocità, da un tempo relativamente breve. Come Schwartz

aveva detto, egli a stento si aspettava di raggiungerlo; ma un senso assai

realistico delle distanze in gioco gli aveva detto che doveva assai presto

giungere in vista di lui. E allora, proprio mentre la disperazione cominciava a

calare e a spandersi vagamente sul desolato paesaggio, lo

vide infine.

Un punto bianco, che leggermente, lentamente, s’ingrandì in qualcosa come

una figura bianca, apparve lontano davanti, cavalcando furiosamente. Si ingrandì

a tal punto perché Schwartz riuscì in uno scatto a cavalcare furiosamente

lui stesso; ma era abbastanza grande da mostrare la fioca striscia d’arancione

attraverso l’uniforme bianca che segnava il reggimento degli Ussari.

Il vincitore del premio di tiro, in tutto l’esercito, aveva colpito

il bianco di bersagli più piccoli di quello.

Imbracciò la carabina; e un’esplosione di rumore innaturale scosse tutti

gli uccelli selvatici per miglia sulle silenziose paludi. Ma il Sergente

Schwartz non si curò di loro. Ciò che lo interessava era che,

persino a tale distanza, poteva vedere la diritta, bianca figura

piegarsi storta e mutare forma, come se l’uomo fosse improvvisamente diventato

deforme. Pendeva come un gobbo sopra la sella; e

Schwartz, col suo occhio esatto e la lunga esperienza, era certo che

la sua vittima fosse colpita attraverso il corpo; e quasi certo che

fosse colpita attraverso il cuore. Poi abbatté il cavallo con un

secondo colpo; e l’intero gruppo equestre si rovesciò e scivolò

e slittò e svanì in un bianco lampo nel buio acquitrino

sottostante.

Il sergente dalla testa dura era certo che il suo lavoro fosse compiuto. Gli uomini

dalla testa dura del suo genere sono in generale assai precisi su ciò che

stanno facendo; ecco perché tanto spesso hanno del tutto torto su ciò che

fanno. Aveva oltraggiato il cameratismo che è l’anima degli

eserciti; aveva ucciso un valoroso ufficiale che era nell’adempimento

del proprio dovere; aveva ingannato e sfidato il proprio sovrano e commesso

un comune omicidio senza scusa di lite personale; ma aveva

obbedito al proprio ufficiale superiore e aveva contribuito a uccidere un Polacco.

Questi due ultimi fatti per il momento gli riempivano la mente; ed egli cavalcò

pensoso di ritorno per fare rapporto al Maresciallo Von Grock.

Non aveva dubbi sulla scrupolosità del lavoro che aveva svolto.

L’uomo che portava la grazia era certamente morto; e anche se per

qualche miracolo fosse stato solo morente, non avrebbe concepibilmente potuto

cavalcare il suo cavallo morto o morente fino alla città in tempo per impedire l’

esecuzione. No; nel complesso era assai più pratico e prudente

tornare sotto l’ala del suo protettore, l’autore del

disperato progetto. Con tutta la sua forza si appoggiava alla

forza del grande Maresciallo.

E davvero il grande Maresciallo aveva questa grandezza; che

dopo la cosa mostruosa che aveva fatto, o fatto fare, egli

sdegnava di mostrare alcuna paura di affrontare i fatti sul posto o le

compromettenti eventualità di restare in contatto col suo strumento. Egli

e il sergente, in effetti, un’ora circa più tardi, cavalcarono davvero lungo

il crinale insieme, finché giunsero a un punto particolare dove il

Maresciallo scese di sella, ma ordinò all’altro di proseguire. Desiderava

che il sergente andasse avanti fino alla meta originaria dei cavalieri, e vedesse

se tutto era quieto in città dopo l’esecuzione, o se

restava qualche pericolo dal risentimento popolare.

“È qui, allora, Maresciallo?” chiese il sergente a bassa voce. “Mi

era parso fosse più avanti; ma è un fatto che l’infernale strada sembrava

allungarsi come un incubo.”

“È qui,” rispose Grock, e si calò pesantemente da sella e

staffa, e poi andò all’orlo del lungo parapetto e

guardò giù.

La luna era sorta sulle paludi e si era levata rafforzandosi in

splendore e brillando su acque scure e schiuma verde; e nel

più vicino ciuffo di canne, ai piedi del pendio, giaceva, come in

una sorta di luminoso e radioso relitto, tutto ciò che restava di uno di

those superb white horses and white horsemen of his old brigade.

Nor was the identity doubtful; the moon made a sort of aureole of

the curled golden hair of young Arnold, the second rider and the

bearer of the reprieve; and the same mystical moonshine glittered

not only on baldrick and buttons, but on the special medals of the

young soldier and the stripes and signs of his degree. Under such

a glamorous veil of light, he might almost have been in the white

armour of Sir Galahad; and there could scarcely have been a more

horrible contrast than that between such fallen grace and youth

below and the rocky and grotesque figure looking down from above.

Grock had taken off his helmet again; and though it is possible

that this was the vague shadow of some funereal form of respect,

its visible effect was that the queer naked head and neck like that

of a pachyderm glittered stonily in the moon, like the hairless

head and neck of some monster of the Age of Stone. Rops, or some

such etcher of the black, fantastic German schools, might have

drawn such a picture: of a huge beast as inhuman as a beetle

looking down on the broken wings and white and golden armour of

some defeated champion of the Cherubim.

Grock said no prayer and uttered no pity; but in some dark way his

mind was moved, as even the dark and mighty swamp will sometimes

move like a living thing; and as such men will, when feeling for

the first time faintly on their defence before they know not what,

he tried to formulate his only faith and confront it with the stark

universe and the staring moon.

“After and before the deed the German Will is the same. It cannot

be broken by changes and by time, like that of those others who

repent. It stands outside time like a thing of stone, looking

forward and backward with the same face.”

The silence that followed lasted long enough to please his cold

vanity with a certain sense of portent; as if a stone figure had

spoken in a valley of silence. But the silence began to thrill

once more with a distant whisper which was the faint throb of

horsehoofs; and a moment later the sergeant came galloping, or

rather racing, back along the uplifted road, and his scarred and

swarthy visage was no longer merely grim but ghastly in the moon.

“Marshal,” he said, saluting with a strange stiffness, “I have seen

Petrowski the Pole!”

“Haven’t they buried him yet?” asked the Marshal, still staring

down and in some abstraction.

“If they have,” said Schwartz, “he has rolled the stone away and

risen from the dead.”

He stared in front of him at the moon and marshes; but, indeed,

though he was far from being a visionary character, it was not

these things that he saw, but rather the things he had just seen.

He had, indeed, seen Paul Petrowski walking alive and alert down

the brilliantly illuminated main avenue of that Polish town to the

very beginning of the causeway; there was no mistaking the slim

figure with plumes of hair and tuft of Frenchified beard which

figured in so many private albums and illustrated magazines. And

behind him he had seen that Polish town aflame with flags and

firebrands and a population boiling with triumphant hero-worship,

though perhaps less hostile to the government than it might have

been, since it was rejoicing at the release of its popular hero.

“Do you mean,” cried Grock with a sudden croaking stridency of

voice, “that they have dared to release him in defiance of my

message?”

Schwartz saluted again and said:

“They had already released him and they have received no message.”

“Do you ask me, after all this,” said Grock, “to believe that no

messenger came from our camp at all?”

“No messenger at all,” said the sergeant.

There was a much longer silence, and then Grock said, hoarsely:

“What in the name of hell has happened? Can you think of anything

to explain it all?”

“I have seen something,” said the sergeant, “which I think does

explain it all.”

When Mr. Pond had told the story up to this point, he paused with

an irritating blankness of expression.

“Well,” said Gahagan impatiently, “and do YOU know anything that

would explain it all?”

“Well, I think I do,” said Mr. Pond meekly. “You see, I had to

worry it out for myself, when the report came round to my

department. It really did arise from an excess of Prussian

obedience. It also arose from an excess of another Prussian

weakness: contempt. And of all the passions that blind and madden

and mislead men, the worst is the coldest: contempt.

“Grock had talked much too comfortably before the cow, and much too

confidently before the cabbage. He despised stupid men even on his

own staff; and treated Von Hocheimer, the first messenger, as a

piece of furniture merely because he looked like a fool; but the

Lieutenant was not such a fool as he looked. He also understood

what the great Marshal meant, quite as well as the cynical

sergeant, who had done such dirty work all his life. Hocheimer

also understood the Marshal’s peculiar moral philosophy: that an

act is unanswerable even when it is indefensible. He knew that

what his commander wanted was simply the corpse of Petrowski; that

he wanted it anyhow, at the expense of any deception of princes or

destruction of soldiers. And when he heard a swifter horseman

behind him, riding to overtake him, he knew as well as Grock

himself that the new messenger must be carrying with him the

message of the mercy of the Prince. Von Schacht, that very young

but gallant officer, looking like the very embodiment of all that

more generous tradition of Germany that has been too much neglected

in this tale, was worthy of the accident that made him the herald

of a more generous policy. He came with the speed of that noble

horsemanship that has left behind it in Europe the very name of

chivalry, calling out to the other in a tone like a herald’s

trumpet to stop and stand and turn. And Von Hocheimer obeyed. He

stopped, he reined in his horse, he turned in his saddle; but his

hand held the carbine levelled like a pistol, and he shot the boy

between the eyes.

“Then he turned again and rode on, carrying the death-warrant of

the Pole. Behind him horse and man had crashed over the edge of

the embankment, so that the whole road was clear. And along that

clear and open road toiled in his turn the third messenger,

marvelling at the interminable length of his journey; till he saw

at last the unmistakable uniform of a Hussar like a white star

disappearing in the distance, and he shot also. Only he did not

kill the second messenger, but the first.

“That was why no messenger came alive to the Polish town that

night. That was why the prisoner walked out of his prison alive.

Do you think I was quite wrong in saying that Von Grock had two

faithful servants, and one too many?”

THE CRIME OF CAPTAIN GAHAGAN

It must be confessed that some people thought Mr. Pond a bore. He

had a weakness for long speeches, not out of self-importance, but

because he had an old-fashioned taste in literature; and had

unconsciously inherited the habit of Gibbon or Butler or Burke.

Even his paradoxes were not what are called brilliant paradoxes.

The word brilliant has long been the most formidable weapon of

criticism; but Mr. Pond could not be blasted and withered with a

charge of brilliancy. Thus, in the case now to be considered, when

Mr. Pond said (referring, I grieve to say, to the greater part of

the female sex, at least in its most modern phase): “They go so

fast that they get no farther,” he did not mean it as an epigram.

And somehow it did not sound epigrammatic; but only odd and

obscure. And the ladies to whom he said it, notably the Hon.

Violet Varney, could see no sense in it. They thought Mr. Pond,

when he was not boring, was only bewildering.

Anyhow, Mr. Pond did sometimes indulge in long speeches. Triumph

therefore and great glory belongs to anyone who could successfully

stop Mr. Pond from making long speeches; and this laurel is for the

brows of Miss Artemis Asa-Smith, of Pentapolis, Pa. She came to

interview Mr. Pond for The Live Wire, touching his alleged views on

the Haggis Mystery; and she did not let him get a word in edgeways.

“I believe,” began Mr. Pond, rather nervously, “that your paper is

inquiring about what some call Private Execution, and I call

murder, but—”

“Forget it,” said the young lady briefly. “It’s just too wonderful

for me to be sitting here next to all secrets of your government;

why—”

She continued her monologue; though in a style of dots and dashes.

As she would not let Mr. Pond interrupt her, she seemed to think it

only fair to interrupt herself. Somehow it seemed at once as if

her speech would never end; and not one sentence of it was ever

ended.

We have all heard of American interviewers who rip up family

secrets, break down bedroom doors and collect information in the

manner of burglars. There are some; but there are also others.

There are, or were, when the writer remembers them, a very large

number of intelligent men ready to discuss intelligent things; and

there was Miss Asa-Smith. She was small and dark; she was rather

pretty and would have been very pretty if she had not dipped her

lipstick in hues of earthquake and eclipse. Her finger-nails were

painted five different colours, looking like the paints in a

child’s paintbox; and she was as innocent as a child. She was also

as garrulous as a child. She felt something paternal about Mr.

Pond and told him everything. He did not have to tell her

anything. No buried tragedies of the Pond family were dug up; no

secrets of the crimes committed behind Mr. Pond’s bedroom door.

Conversation, so to describe it, revolved largely round her early

days in Pennsylvania; her first ambitions and ideals; which two

things, like many of her local traditions, she seemed to imagine to

be the same. She was a Feminist and had stood up with Ada P. Tuke

against clubs and saloons and the selfishness of man. She had

written a play; and she just longed to read it to Mr. Pond.

“About that question of Private Execution,” said Mr. Pond politely,

“I suppose we’ve all been tempted in desperate moments—”

“Well, I’m just desperate to read you this play, and—you know how

it is. You see, my play’s awfully MODERN. But even the modernest

people haven’t done just that—I mean, beginning in the water and

then—”

“Beginning in the water?” inquired Mr. Pond.

“Yes, isn’t it just too—oh, you know. I suppose they will have

all characters in bathing dresses soon—but they’ll only just enter

L. or R.; come on at the side, you know—and all the old stuff. My

characters enter from above, diving, with a splash—Well, that’ll

be a splash, won’t it? I mean to say, it begins like that.” She

began to read very rapidly:

“Scene, sea outside the Lido.

“Voice of Tom Toxin (from above): ‘See me make a splash, if—’

(Toxin dives from above to stage in pea-green bathing-suit).

“Voice of Duchess (from above): ‘Only sort of splash you’ll ever

make, you—’ (Duchess dives from above in scarlet bathing-suit).

“Toxin (coming up spluttering): ‘Splutter as splutter … splosh

is the only splash by your—.’

“Duchess: ‘Oh, Grandpa!’”

“She calls him Grandpa, you see, because ‘splosh’ means money in

that ever-so-old comic song—they’re quite young really, of course,

and rather … you know. But—”

Mr. Pond interposed with delicacy and firmness: “I wonder whether

you would be so very kind, Miss Asa-Smith, as to leave the

manuscript with me or send me a copy, so that I can enjoy it at

leisure. It reads rather quickly for old buffers like me; and

nobody ever seems to finish a sentence. But do you think you can

persuade our leading actors and actresses to dive from great

heights into a stage sea?”

“Oh, I dare say some of the old-stagers would be stuffy about it,”

she replied, “because—can’t fancy your great tragedienne, Olivia

Feversham—though she’s not so old really and just lovely still,

only—but so Shakespearian! But I’ve got the Honourable Violet

Varney to PROMISE, and her sister’s quite a friend of mine, though

of course not so—and lots of amateurs would do it for fun. That

Gahagan guy is a good swimmer, and he’s acted, too, and—oh, well,

he’d click if Joan Varney’s in it.”

The face of Mr. Pond, hitherto patient and stoical, became quite

silently alert and alive. He said with a new gravity:

“Captain Gahagan is a great friend of mine, and he has introduced

me to Miss Varney. As to her sister, the one on the stage—”

“Not a patch on Joan, is she? But—” said Miss Asa-Smith.

Mr. Pond had formed an impression. He liked Miss Asa-Smith. He

liked her very much. And the thought of the Honourable Violet

Varney, that English aristocrat, made him like the American even

more. The Honourable Violet was one of those wealthy women who pay

to act badly; and blackleg the poorer people who might have been

paid to act well. She certainly was quite capable of diving in a

bathing dress, or in anything or nothing, if it were the only way

to the stage and the spot-light. She was quite capable of helping

Miss Asa-Smith in her absurd play and talking similar nonsense

about being modern and independent of selfish man. But there was a

difference; and it was not to the advantage of the Honourable

Violet. Poor Artemis followed idiotic fashions because she was a

hard-working journalist who had to earn her living; and Violet

Varney only took away other people’s living. They both spoke in

the style that was a string of unfinished sentences. It was the

one language Mr. Pond thought that might truly be called broken

English. But Violet dropped the tail of a sentence as if she were

too tired to finish it; Artemis did so as if she were really too

eager to get on to the next. There was within her, somehow, a

thing, a spirit of life, which survives every criticism of America.

“Joan Varney’s much nicer,” continued Artemis, “and you bet your

friend Gahagan thinks so. Do you think they’ll really hitch up?

He’s a queer fellow, you know.”

Mr. Pond did not deny it. Captain Gahagan, that swaggering and

restless and sometimes sullen man-about-town, was queer in many

ways; and in none more than in his almost incongruous affection for

the precise and prosaic Mr. Pond.

“Some say he’s a rotter,” said the candid American. “I don’t say

that; but I do say he’s a dark horse. And he does shilly-shally

about Joan Varney, doesn’t he? Some say he’s really in love with

the great Olivia—your only tragic actress. Only she’s so jolly

tragic.”

“God send she doesn’t play in a real tragedy,” said Pond.

He knew what he meant; but he had not the faintest foreshadowing of

the awful tragedy of real life and death in which Olivia Feversham

was to play within the next twenty-four hours.

He was only thinking of his Irish friend as he knew him; and he was

near enough to know all that he did not know. Peter Patrick

Gahagan lived the modern life, perhaps to excess, was a prop of

nightclubs and a driver of sports cars, still comparatively young;

but, for all that, he was a survival. He belonged to the times of

a more Byronic pose. When Mr. W. B. Yeats wrote: “Romantic

Ireland’s dead and gone; it’s with O’Leary in the grave,” he had

never met Gahagan, who was not yet in the grave. He was of that

older tradition by a hundred tests; he had been a cavalry soldier

and also a member of Parliament; the last to follow the old Irish

orators with their rounded periods. Like all these, for some

reason, he adored Shakespeare. Isaac Butt filled speeches with

Shakespeare; Tim Healy could quote the poet so that his poetry

seemed part of the living talk at table; Russell of Killowen read

no other book. But he, like they, was Shakespearian in an

eighteenth-century way: the way of Garrick; and that eighteenth

century that he recalled had a pretty pagan side to it. Pond could

not dismiss the chances of Gahagan having an affair with Olivia or

anyone else; and if so a storm might be brewing. For Olivia was

married; and to no complaisant husband, either.

Frederick Feversham was something worse than an unsuccessful actor;

he was one who had been successful. He was now forgotten in the

theatre and remembered only in the law-courts. A dark and crabbed

man, still haggardly handsome, he had become famous, or familiar,

as a sort of permanent litigant. He was eternally bringing actions

against people whom he charged with trivial tricks and distant and

disputable wrongs: managers and rivals and the rest. He had as yet

no special quarrel with his wife, younger than himself and still

popular in the profession. But he was much less intimate with his

wife than with his solicitor.

Through court after court Feversham passed, pursuing his rights and

followed like a shadow by his solicitor, Luke, of the firm of

Masters, Luke and Masters; a young man with flat, yellow hair and a

rather wooden face. What he thought of his client’s feuds and how

far he ventured to restrain them, that wooden face would never

reveal. But he worked well for his client; and the two had

necessarily become in a way companions-in-arms. Of one thing Pond

was certain. Neither Feversham nor Luke was likely to spare

Gahagan, if that erratic gentleman put himself in the wrong. But

this part of the problem was destined to find a worse solution than

he dreamed of. Twenty-four hours after Pond’s talk with the

interviewer, he learned that Frederick Feversham was dead.

Like other litigious persons, Mr. Feversham had left a legal

problem behind him, to feed many lawyers with fees. But it was not

the problem of an ill-drawn will or a dubious signature. It was

the problem of a stiff and staring corpse, lying just inside a

garden-gate and nailed there by a fencing-sword with the button

broken off. Frederick Feversham, that legalist, had suffered at

least one final and indisputable illegality; he had been stabbed to

death as he entered his own home.

Long before certain facts, slowly collected, were put before the

police, they were put before Mr. Pond. This may seem odd, but

there were reasons; indeed Mr. Pond, like many other Government

officials, had rather secret and unsuspected spheres of influence;

his public powers were very private. Younger and more conspicuous

men had even been known to stand in a certain awe of him, owing to

special circumstances. But to explain all that is to explore the

labyrinth of the most unconstitutional of all constitutions. In

any case, his first warning of the trouble took the commonplace

form of an ordinary legal letter, with the heading of the well-

known firm of Masters, Luke and Masters, expressing the hope that

Mr. Luke might be allowed to discuss certain information with Mr.

Pond, before it was necessary for it to reach the police

authorities or the Press. Mr. Pond replied equally formally that

he would be delighted to receive Mr. Luke at a certain hour upon

the following day. Then he sat and stared into vacancy, with that

rather goggling expression which led some of his friends to compare

him to a fish.

He had already thought of about two-thirds of what the solicitor

was going to tell him.

“The truth is, Mr. Pond,” said the solicitor, in a confidential but

still careful voice, when he was at length deposited on the other

side of Mr. Pond’s table next day. “The truth is that the

possibilities of this affair, painful in any case, may be specially

painful for you. Most of us find it impossible to imagine that a

personal friend might come under suspicion in such matters.”

The mild eyes of Mr. Pond opened very wide, and even his mouth made

the momentary movement which some thought so very fishy. The

lawyer probably assumed that he was shocked at the first suggestion

of his friend being affected; in fact, he was mildly amazed to

suppose that anybody had not entertained the idea long ago. He

knew that words to that effect were common in the more conventional

detective stories, which he heartily enjoyed, as a change from

Burke and Gibbon. He could see the printed words on a hundred

pages: “None of us could believe that this handsome young

cricketer had committed a crime,” or: “It seemed absurd to connect

murder with a man like Captain Pickleboy, the most popular figure

in Society.” He had always wondered what the words meant. To his

simple and sceptical eighteenth-century mind, they seemed to mean

nothing at all. Why should not pleasant and fashionable men commit

murders, like anybody else? He was very much upset himself,

inside, about this particular case; but he still did not understand

that way of talking.

“I am sorry to say,” continued the lawyer in a low voice, “that

private investigation which we have already made, on our own

account, places your friend, Captain Gahagan, in a position

requiring explanation.”

“Yes,” thought Pond, “and, my God, Gahagan really does require

explanation! That’s exactly the difficulty about him—but, Lord,

how slow this fellow is!” In short, the real trouble was that Pond

was very fond of Captain Gahagan; but in so far as one could ask

whether men were capable of murder, he was rather inclined to think

that Gahagan WAS capable of murder—more capable of murder than of

meanness to a cabman.

Suddenly, with extraordinary vividness, the image of Gahagan

himself sprang up in Pond’s memory: Gahagan as he had last seen him

lounging with his large shoulders and long stride, and strange dark-

red hair under the rather rakishly tilted grey top-hat, and behind

him a space of sunset where the evening clouds passed in a sort of

crumbling purple pomp, rather like the pomp of poor Gahagan

himself. No; the Irishman was a man seventy-and-seven times to be

forgiven; but not a man to be lightly acquitted.

“Mr. Luke,” said Pond suddenly, “will it save time if I tell you,

to start with, what I know there is against Gahagan? He was

hanging round Mrs. Feversham, the great actress; I don’t know why

he was; my own belief is that he is really in love with another

woman. Yet he did unquestionably give the actress a huge amount of

his time: hours and hours and late hours too. But if Feversham

caught him doing anything unconventional, Feversham was not the man

to let him off without a lawsuit and a scandal and God knows what.

I don’t want to criticize your client; but, speaking crudely, he

almost lived on lawsuits and scandals all his life. And if

Feversham was the man to threaten or blackmail, I give it you

frankly that Gahagan was the man to hit him back in a bodily

fashion; and perhaps kill him, especially if a lady’s name were

involved. That is the case against Captain Gahagan; and I tell you

at the start that I don’t believe in it.”

“Unfortunately it is not the whole case against Captain Gahagan,”

replied Luke smoothly, “and I fear the full Statement may make even

you believe it. Perhaps the most serious result of our

investigations is this. It is now quite clearly established that

Captain Gahagan gave three quite contrary and inconsistent accounts

of his movements, or proposed movements, on the evening of the

murder. Allowing him the highest possible marks for truthfulness

in the matter, he must at least have told two lies to one truth.”

“I have always found Gahagan truthful enough,” replied Pond,

“except when he was telling lies for amusement; which is really

rather the mark of a man who doesn’t prostitute the sublime art of

lying to the base uses of necessity. About all ordinary practical

things, I have found him not only frank but also rather precise.”

“Even accepting what you say,” answered Mr. Luke dubiously, “we

should still have to answer: If he was commonly candid and

truthful, it must have been a mortal and desperate occasion that

made him lie.”

“To whom did he tell these lies?” asked Pond.

“That is where the whole matter is so painful and delicate,” said

the lawyer, shaking his head. “That afternoon, it seems, Gahagan

had been talking to several ladies.”

“He generally has,” said Pond. “Or was it they who were talking to

him? If one of them happened, for instance, to be that very

charming lady, Miss Asa-Smith of Pentapolis, I would venture to

guess that it was she who was talking to him.”

“This is rather extraordinary,” said Luke in some surprise. “I do

not know if it was a guess; but one of them certainly was a Miss

Asa-Smith of Pentapolis. The other two were the Hon. Violet Varney

and, last but not least, the Hon. Joan Varney. As a matter of

fact, it was the last that he spoke to first; which, I suppose, was

only natural. It is notable, on your own suggestion, that he is

really attached to this last lady, that his statement to her was

apparently much the nearest to the truth.”

“Ah,” said Mr. Pond, and pulled his beard thoughtfully.

“Joan Varney,” observed the lawyer gravely, “stated most

definitely, before she knew that there was any trouble or tragedy

in this case, that Captain Gahagan had left the house saying: ‘I

am going round to the Fevershams’.’”

“And you say that is contradicted by his statement to the others,”

said Mr. Pond.

“Most emphatically,” replied Luke. “The other sister, well known

on the stage as Violet Varney, stopped him as he was going out and

they exchanged a little light conversation. But, as he left, he

distinctly said to her: ‘I’m not going to the Fevershams’; they’re

still at Brighton,’ or something like that.”

“And now we come,” said Mr. Pond, smiling, “to my young friend from

Pentapolis. What was she doing there, by the way?”

“He found her on the doorstep when he opened the front door,”

replied Mr. Luke, also smiling. “She had arrived in a rush of

enthusiasm to interview Violet Varney as ‘Comedienne and Social

Leader.’ Neither she nor Gahagan are the sort of people not to be

noticed; or to fail to notice each other. So Gahagan had a little

talk with her, too; at the end of which he departed, with a

flourish of his grey top-hat, telling her that he was going

immediately to the club.”

“Are you certain of that?” asked Pond, frowning.

“She was certain of it; because she was in a red-hot rage about

it,” replied Luke. “It seems that she has some feminist fad on the

subject. She thinks all male persons who go to clubs go there to

tell slanderous anecdotes about women and then drink themselves

under the table. She may have had a little professional feeling

about it too; perhaps she would have liked to have a longer

interview, either for herself or The Live Wire. But I’ll swear

she’s quite honest.”

“Oh, yes,” said Mr. Pond emphatically but rather gloomily, “she’s

absolutely honest.”

“Well, there it is,” said Luke, speaking also not without a decent

gloom. “It seems to me that the psychology’s only too obvious

under the circumstances. He blurted out where he was really going

to the girl he was accustomed to confide in; perhaps he didn’t

really plan the crime till later; or perhaps it wasn’t entirely

planned or premeditated. But by the time he talked to less

friendly people he saw how unwise it would be to say he was going

to the Fevershams’. His first impulse is to say, hastily and too

crudely, that he was NOT going to the Fevershams’. Then, by the

third interview, he thinks of a really good lie, normal and

sufficiently vague, and says he is going to the club.”

“It might be like that,” replied Pond, “or it might—” And Mr.

Pond fell for the first time into the lax habit of Miss Asa-Smith,

and failed to finish his sentence. Instead he sat staring at the

distance with his rather goggle-eyed and fish-like gaze; then he

put his head on his hands, said apologetically: “Please pardon me

if I think for a minute,” and buried his bald brows once more.

The bearded fish came to the surface again with a somewhat new

expression, and said with a brisk and almost sharp tone:

“You seem very much bent on bringing the crime home to poor

Gahagan.”

For the first time Luke’s features stiffened to hardness, or even

harshness. “We naturally wish to bring the murderer of our client

to justice.”

Pond bent forward and his eyes were penetrating as he repeated:

“But you will have it that the murderer was Gahagan.”

“I’ve given you the evidence,” said Luke, lowering; “you know the

witnesses.”

“And yet, oddly enough,” said Pond very slowly, “you haven’t

mentioned the really damning thing against him in the report of

those witnesses.”

“It’s damning enough—what do you mean?” snapped the lawyer.

“I mean the fact that they are UNWILLING witnesses,” replied Pond.

“It couldn’t be a conspiracy. My little Yank is as honest as the

day and would never join a conspiracy. He’s the sort of man women

like. Even Violet Varney likes him. Joan Varney loves him. And

yet they all give evidence to contradict him or, at least, show he

contradicted himself. And yet they’re all wrong.”

“What the devil do you mean,” cried Luke with sudden impatience,

“by saying they’re all wrong?”

“They’re all wrong about what he said,” answered Pond. “Did you

ask them if he said anything else?”

“What else is needed?” cried the lawyer, now really angry. “They

could all swear he said what I say. Going to the Fevershams’; not

going to the Fevershams’; going to some unnamed club—and then

bolting down the street so as to leave a lady in a rage.”

“Precisely,” said Pond. “You say he said three different things.

I say he said the same thing to all three. He turned it the other

way round and made it the same.”

“He turned it the other way round all right,” retorted Luke almost

viciously. “But if he goes into the witness-box, he’ll find out

whether the law of perjury says that turning a thing round makes it

the same.”

There was a pause and then Mr. Pond said serenely:

“So now we know all about the Crime of Captain Gahagan.”

“Who says we know all about anything? I don’t. Do you?”

“Yes,” said Mr. Pond. “The Crime of Captain Gahagan was that he

didn’t understand women; especially modern women. These men with a

vague air of being lady-killers seldom do. Don’t you know that

dear old Gahagan is really your great-great-grandfather?”

Mr. Luke made a movement as of sudden and sincere alarm; he was not

the first man to fancy for a moment that Mr. Pond was mad.

“Can’t you see,” went on Pond, “that he belongs to the school of

the old bucks and beaux who called her ‘Woman, Lovely Woman,’ and

knew nothing whatever about her—to the considerable increase of

her power? But how they could pay compliments! ‘Stand close

about, you Stygian set… .’ But perhaps, as you seem to

suggest, it is not quite relevant. But you see what I mean by

Gahagan being the old sort of lady-killer?”

“I know he’s a very old sort of gentleman-killer,” cried Luke quite

violently, “and that he killed the worthy and greatly wronged

gentleman who was my client and friend!”

“You seem a little annoyed,” said Mr. Pond. “Have you tried

reading Dr. Johnson’s Vanity of Human Wishes? Very soothing.

Believe me, those eighteenth-century writers I wanted to quote are

very soothing. Have you read Addison’s play about Cato?”

“You appear to be mad,” said the lawyer, now positively pale.

“Or again,” continued Mr. Pond in a chatty way, “have you read Miss

Asa-Smith’s play about the duchess in the bathing-suit? All the

sentences curiously cut short—like the bathing-suit.”

“Do you mean anything whatever?” asked the lawyer in a low voice.

“Oh, yes, I mean a great deal,” replied Pond. “But it takes quite

a long time to explain—like the Vanity of Human Wishes. What I

mean is this. My friend Gahagan is very fond of those old wits and

orators, just as I am; speeches where you have to wait for the

peroration; epigrams with the sting in the tail. That’s how we

first became friends, by both being fond of the eighteenth-century

style; balance and antithesis and all that. Now if you have this

habit and read, say, the hackneyed lines in Cato: ”Tis not in

mortals to command success; but we’ll do more, Sempronius, we’ll

deserve it’—well, it may be good or bad; but you’ve got to wait

for the end of the sentence; because it begins with a platitude and

ends with a point. But the modern sort of sentence never ends; and

nobody waits for it to end.

“Now women were always a little like that. It isn’t that they

don’t think, they think quicker than we do. They often talk

better. But they don’t LISTEN so well. They leap so quickly upon

the first point; they see so much more in it; and go off in a

gallop of inference about it—so that they sometimes don’t notice

the rest of the speech at all. But Gahagan, being of the other

sort, the old oratorical sort, would always end his sentence

properly, and be as careful to say what he meant at the end as the

beginning.

“I suggest to you, as the barristers say, that what Captain Gahagan

really said to Joan in the first case was this: ‘I’m going round

to the Fevershams’; I don’t believe they are back from Brighton

yet, but I’ll just look in and see. If they’re not. I’ll go on to

the club.’ That is what Peter Gahagan said; but that is not what

Joan Varney heard. She heard about going to the Fevershams’ and

felt at once that she knew all about it—far too much about it—to

the not unnatural tune of ‘He’s going to see that woman’; even

though his next words were that the woman almost certainly wasn’t

there. Stuff about Brighton and the club didn’t interest her, and

she didn’t even remember it. Very well, let us go on to the next

case. What Gahagan said to Violet Varney was this: ‘It’s no good

going to the Fevershams’ really; they’re not back from Brighton;

but perhaps I’ll look in and see; if they’re not back, I shall go

on to the club.’ Violet is much less truthful and careful than

Joan; and she was jealous of Olivia herself, but in a much

shallower way, Violet supposing herself to be an actress. She also

heard the word Feversham and remembered vaguely that he said it was

no good going there; that is, that he was not going there. She was

pleased at this and condescended to chat with him; but did not

condescend to pay any attention whatever to anything else he said.

“Now for the third case. What Gahagan said to Miss Artemis Asa-

Smith on the doorstep was this: ‘I’m going to the club; I promised

to look in on some friends of mine on the way, the Fevershams; but

I don’t believe they’re back from Brighton.’ That’s what he said.

What Artemis heard, saw and blasted with her blazing eye, was a

typical insolent, selfish, self-indulgent male brazenly bragging in

the open street of his intention to go to his infamous club, where

women are slandered and men drugged with alcohol. After the shock

of this shameless avowal, of course she could not stoop to pick up

the pieces of any other silly things he had said. He was simply

the man who went to the club.

“Now all those three real statements of Gahagan are exactly the

same. They all mean the same thing; map out the same course of

action; give the same reasons for the same acts. But they sound

totally different according to which sentence comes first;

especially to these rather jumpy modern girls, accustomed only to

jump at the sentence that comes first—very often because there

isn’t any thing at all to come after it. The Asa-Smith school of

drama, in which every sentence stops as soon as it starts, if it

doesn’t strike you as having much to do with the Tragedy of Cato,

has had a very great deal to do with the Tragedy of Captain

Gahagan. They might have hanged my friend between them, with the

best intentions in the world, simply and solely because they will

think only in half-sentences. Broken necks, broken hearts, broken

lives, and all because they won’t learn any language but broken

English. Don’t you think there’s something to be said for that

musty old taste of his and mine, for the sort of literature that

makes you read all that a man writes and listen to all that he

says? Wouldn’t you rather have an important statement made to you

in the language of Addison or Johnson than in the splutterings of

Mr. Toxin and the Diving Duchess?”

During this monologue, certainly rather long, the lawyer had grown

more and more restless and full of nervous irritation.

“This is all fancywork,” he said almost feverishly. “You haven’t

proved any of this.”

“No,” said Pond gravely, “as you say, I fancied it. At least I

guessed it. But I did ring up Gahagan and hear something of the

truth of his words and movements that afternoon.”

“Truth!” cried Luke, with very extraordinary bitterness.

Pond looked at him curiously. That woodenness of visage which was

the first impression produced by Mr. Luke was found on examination

to consist mostly of a rather forced look of fixity, combined with

the rigid smoothness of his head and hair, the latter looking as if

it had been painted on with some rather sticky yellow paint: a

gummy gamboge. His eyelids indeed were cold and often partially

closed; but inside them the grey-green eyes seemed strangely small,

as if they were distant; and they were dancing and darting about

like microscopic green flies. The more Mr. Pond looked at those

veiled but restless eyes, the less he liked them. The old fancy

came back to him about an actual conspiracy against Gahagan; though

certainly not one worked by Artemis or Joan. At last he broke the

silence very abruptly.

“Mr. Luke,” he said, “you are naturally concerned for your late

client; but some might feel you had a more than professional

interest. Since you study his interests so deeply, can you give me

a piece of information about him? DID Mr. Feversham and his wife

come back from Brighton that day? Was Mrs. Feversham at the house

that afternoon, whether Gahagan went there, or not?”

“She was not,” said Luke shortly. “They were both expected to

return next morning. I have no idea why Feversham himself did

return that night.”

“Looks almost as if somebody had sent for him,” said Mr. Pond.

Mr. Luke the solicitor rose abruptly from his seat and turned away.

“I cannot see any use in all these speculations of yours,” he said,

and, making a stiff salute, he took his top-hat and was gone from

the house with a swiftness that seemed hardly normal.

Next day Mr. Pond clad himself even more conventionally and

carefully than usual, and proceeded to pay a round of calls on a

series of ladies: a frivolous solemnity which with him was by no

means usual. The first lady he waited upon was the Hon. Violet

Varney, whom he had hitherto only seen in the distance, and was

gently depressed at having to see so close. She was what he

believed, in these latter days, to be described as a platinum

blonde. It was doubtless a graceful reminiscence of her own name

which led her to tint her mouth and cheeks with a colour that was

rather violet than purple, giving an effect which her friends

called ghostly and her foes ghastly. Even from this listless

lady he did extract some admissions lending to help in the

reconstruction of Gahagan’s real remarks; though the lady’s own

remarks had their usual air of expiring with a gasp before they

were really finished. Then he had another interview with her

sister, Joan, and marvelled inwardly at the strange thing which is

human personality and stands apart from modes and manners. For

Joan had very much the same tricks of style; the same rather high,

well-bred voice, the same sketchy, uncompleted sentences; but,

fortunately, not the same purple powder and not in the least the

same eyes or gestures or mind or immortal soul. Mr. Pond, with all

his old-fashioned prejudices, knew at once that in this other girl

the new virtues were virtues, whether or not they were new. She

really was brave and generous and fond of the truth, though the

Society papers did say so. “She’s all right,” said Mr. Pond to

himself. “She’s as good as gold. A great deal better than gold.

And oh, how much better than platinum!”

Stopping at the next stage of his pilgrimage, he visited the

monstrous and ludicrous large hotel which had the honour of housing

Miss Artemis Asa-Smith of Pennsylvania. She received him with the

rather overwhelming enthusiasm which bore her everywhere through

the world; and Mr. Pond had very little difficulty in her case in

extracting an admission that even a man who goes to a club may

happen not to be a murderer. Though this explanation was naturally

less personal and intimate than his interview with Joan (about

which he always refused to say a word to anybody), the ardent

Artemis continued to earn his approval by her reserves of good

sense and good nature. She saw the point about the order of the

topics mentioned, and its probable effect on her own mind; and so

far the diplomacy of Mr. Pond had been successful. All the three

ladies, with whatever degrees of seriousness or concentration, had

listened to his theory of what Gahagan had said; and had all agreed

that he might very probably have said it. This part of his task

being done, Mr. Pond paused a little, and perhaps rather pulled

himself together, before approaching his last duty—which also took

the form of calling on a lady. He might be excused; for it also

involved passing through that grim garden where a man had lain

murdered, to that high and sinister house where his widow was still

living alone: the great Olivia, queen of tragedy, now tragic by a

double claim.

He stepped, not without repugnance, across that dark corner inside

the gate and under the holly tree where poor Fred Feversham had

been spiked to the earth by a mere splinter of a sword; and as he

climbed the crooked path to the doorway in the narrow and bare

brick house that stood above him like a tower, dark against the

stars, he revolved difficulties much deeper than had yet troubled

him in the more trifling matter of the supposed inconsistencies of

Gahagan’s conversation. There was a real question behind all that

nonsense; and it demanded an answer. Somebody had murdered the

unfortunate Frederick Feversham; and there were some real reasons

for directing the suspicion upon Gahagan. After all, he had been

in the habit of spending whole days, or half of the nights as well,

with this actress; nothing seemed more horribly natural, more

repulsively probable, than that they had been surprised by

Feversham and had taken the bloody way out. Mrs. Feversham had

often been compared to Mrs. Siddons. Her own external behaviour

had always been full of dignity and discretion. A scandal for her

was not an advertisement, as it would be for Violet Varney. She

had really the stronger motive of the two … but, good God, this

would never do! Suppose Gahagan really was innocent—but at that

price! Whatever his weaknesses, he was just the man to be hanged

like a gentleman rather than let The Lady—He looked up with

growing terror at the tower of dark brick, wondering if he were to

meet the murderess… . Then he furiously flung off the

morbidity, and tried again to fix himself on the facts. After all,

what was there against Gahagan or the widow? It seemed to him, as

he forced himself to colder considerations, that it really resolved

itself into a matter of time.

Gahagan had certainly spent a huge amount of TIME with Olivia; that

was really the only external proof of his passion for her. The

proofs of his passion for Joan were very external indeed. Pond

could have sworn that the Irishman was really in love with Joan.

He threw himself at her head; and she, on the accepted standards of

modern youth, threw herself back at him. But these encounters, one

might say collisions, were as brief as they were brilliant. Why

did a lover full of such triumphs want to go off and spend such a

lot of TIME with a much older woman? … These broodings had

turned him into an automaton and brought him unconsciously past the

servants and up the stairs and into the very room where he was

asked to wait for Mrs. Feversham. He nervously picked up an old

battered book, apparently dating from the time when the actress was

a schoolgirl, for the flyleaf showed in a very schoolgirl hand:

“Olivia Malone.” Perhaps the great Shakespearian actress claimed

descent from the great Shakespearian critic. But, anyhow, she must

be Irish—at least by tradition… .

As he bent over the shabby book in the dusky anteroom, there shot

into his mind a white ray of serene and complete understanding: so

far as this tale goes, the last of the paradoxes of Mr. Pond. He

felt full and complete certainty; and yet the only words to express

it wrote themselves rapidly across his brain with the bewildering

brevity of a hieroglyphic.

“Love never needs time. But Friendship always needs time. More

and more and more time, up to long past midnight.”

When Gahagan had done those crazy things that blazoned his devotion

to Joan Varney, they had hardly occupied any time. When he fell on

her from a parachute as she came out of church at Bournemouth, the

fall was naturally very rapid. When he tore up a return ticket

costing hundreds of pounds to stay with her half an hour longer in

Samoa, it was only half an hour longer. When he swam the

Hellespont in imitation of Leander, it was only for exactly thirty-

five minutes’ conversation with Hero. But Love is like that. It

is a thing of great moments; and it lives on the memory of moments.

Perhaps it is a fragile illusion; perhaps, on the other hand, it is

eternal and beyond time. But Friendship eats up time. If poor

Gahagan had a real intellectual friendship, then he would go on

talking till long past midnight. And with whom would Gahagan be so

likely to have one as with an Irish actress who was chiefly

interested in Shakespeare? Even as he had the thought, he heard

the rich and faintly Irish voice of Olivia welcoming him; and he

knew he was right.

“Don’t you know,” asked the widow with a mournful smile, when he

had tactfully steered the conversation past condolences to Captain

Gahagan, “don’t you know we poor Irishes have a secret vice? It’s

called Poetry; or perhaps I ought to say it’s generally called

Recitation. It’s been suppressed by the police in all the English

salons; and that’s the worst of the Irish wrongs. People in London

are not allowed to recite poems to each other all night, as they do

in Dublin. Poor Peter used to come to me and talk Shakespeare till

morning; but I had to turn him out at last. When a man calls on

ME, and tries to recite the whole of Romeo and Juliet, it gets past

a joke. But you see how it was. The English won’t allow the poor

fellow to recite Shakespeare.”

Mr. Pond did indeed see how it was. He knew enough about men to

know that a man must have a friend, if possible a female friend, to

talk to till all is blue. He knew enough about Dubliners to know

that neither devils nor dynamite will stop them from reciting

verse. All the black clouds of morbid brooding on the murder which

had oppressed him in the garden had rolled away at the first sound

of this strong, good-humoured irishwoman’s voice. But after a

little while they began to gather again, though more remotely.

After all, as he had said before, SOMEBODY had killed poor Fred

Feversham.

He was quite certain now that it was not Feversham’s wife. He was

practically certain it was not Gahagan. He went home that night

turning the question over and over; but he had only one night’s

unrest. For the next day’s paper contained the news of the

unexplained suicide of Mr. Luke, of the well-known firm of Masters,

Luke and Masters; and Mr. Pond sat gently chiding himself, because

he had not thought of the obvious fact that a man who is always

tearing and rending people because he has been swindled, may

possibly discover one day that he has been swindled by his own

solicitor. Feversham had summoned Luke to that midnight meeting in

the garden, in order to tell him so; but Mr. Luke, a man careful of

his professional standing, had taken very prompt steps to prevent

Mr. Feversham telling anybody else.

“It makes me feel very bad,” said Mr. Pond, meekly and almost

tremulously. “At that last meeting of ours I could see he was

awfully frightened already; and, do you know, I’m very much afraid

that it was I who frightened him.”

WHEN DOCTORS AGREE

Mr. Ponds paradoxes were of a very peculiar kind. They were indeed

paradoxical defiances even of the law of paradox. Paradox has been

defined as “Truth standing on her head to attract attention.”

Paradox has been defended; on the ground that so many fashionable

fallacies still stand firmly on their feet, because they have no

heads to stand on. But it must be admitted that writers, like

other mendicants and mountebanks, frequently do try to attract

attention. They set out conspicuously, in a single line in a play,

or at the head or tail of a paragraph, remarks of this challenging

kind; as when Mr. Bernard Shaw wrote: “The Golden Rule is that

there is no Golden Rule”; or Oscar Wilde observed: “I can resist

everything except temptation”; or a duller scribe (not to be named

with these and now doing penance for his earlier vices in the

nobler toil of celebrating the virtues of Mr. Pond) said in defence

of hobbies and amateurs and general duffers like himself: “If a

thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.” To these things do

writers sink; and then the critics tell them that they “talk for

effect”; and then the writers answer: “What the devil else should

we talk for? Ineffectualness?” It is a sordid scene.

But Mr. Pond belonged to a more polite world and his paradoxes were

quite different. It was quite impossible to imagine Mr. Pond

standing on his head. But it was quite as easy to imagine him

standing on his head as to imagine him trying to attract attention.

He was the quietest man in the world to be a man of the world; he

was a small, neat Civil Servant; with nothing notable about him

except a beard that looked not only old-fashioned but vaguely

foreign, and perhaps a little French, though he was as English as

any man alive. But, for that matter, French respectability is far

more respectable than English; and Mr. Pond, though in some ways

cosmopolitan, was completely respectable. Another thing that was

faintly French about him was the level ripple of his speech: a

tripping monotone that never tripped over a single vowel. For the

French carry their sense of equality even to the equality of

syllables. With this equable flow, full of genteel gossip on

Vienna, he was once entertaining a lady; and five minutes later she

rejoined her friends with a very white face; and whispered to them

the shocking secret that the mild little man was mad.

The peculiarity of his conversation was this: in the middle of a

steady stream of sense, there would suddenly appear two or three

words which seemed simply to be nonsense. It was as if something

had suddenly gone wrong with the works of a gramophone. It was

nonsense which the speaker never seemed to notice himself; so that

sometimes his hearers also hardly noticed that speech so natural

was nonsensical. But to those who did notice, he seemed to be

saying something like, “Naturally, having no legs, he won the

walking-race easily,” or “As there was nothing to drink, they all

got tipsy at once.” Broadly speaking, two kinds of people stopped

him with stares or questions: the very stupid and the very clever.

The stupid because the absurdity alone stuck out from a level of

intelligence that baffled them; it was indeed in itself an example

of the truth in paradox. The only part of his conversation they

could understand was the part they could not understand. And the

clever stopped him because they knew that, behind each of these

queer compact contradictions, there was a very queer story—like

the queer story to be narrated here.

His friend Gahagan, that ginger-haired giant and somewhat flippant

Irish dandy, declared that Pond put in these senseless phrases

merely to find out whether his listeners were listening. Pond

never said so; and his motive remained rather a mystery. But

Gahagan declared that there is a whole tribe of modern intellectual

ladies, who have learned nothing except the art of turning on a

talker a face of ardour and attention, while their minds are so

very absent that some little phrase like, “Finding himself in

India, he naturally visited Toronto,” will pass harmlessly in at

one ear and out at the other, without disturbing the cultured mind

within.

It was at a little dinner given by old Wotton to Gahagan and Pond

and others, that we first got a glimpse of the real meaning of

these wild parentheses of so tame a talker. The truth was, to

begin with, that Mr. Pond, in spite of his French beard, was very

English in his habit of assuming that he ought to be a little dull,

in deference to other people. He disliked telling long and largely

fantastic stories about himself, such as his friend Gahagan told,

though Pond thoroughly enjoyed them when Gahagan told them. Pond

himself had had some very curious experiences; but, as he would not

turn them into long stories, they appeared only as short stories;

and the short stories were so very short as to be quite

unintelligible. In trying to explain the eccentricity, it is best

to begin with the simplest example, like a diagram in a primer of

logic. And I will begin with the short story, which was concealed

in the shorter phrase, which puzzled poor old Wotton so completely

on that particular evening. Wotton was an old-fashioned

diplomatist, of the sort that seemed to grow more national by

trying to be international. Though far from militarist, he was

very military. He kept the peace by staccato sentences under a

stiff grey moustache. He had more chin than forehead.

“They tell me,” Wotton was saying, “that the Poles and Lithuanians

have come to an agreement about Wilno. It was an old row, of

course; and I expect it was six to one and half a dozen to the

other.”

“You are a real Englishman, Wotton,” said Gahagan, “and you say in

your heart, ‘All these foreigners are alike.’ You’re right enough

if you mean that we’re all unlike you. The English are the

lunatics of the earth, who know that everybody else is mad. But we

do sometimes differ a little from each other, you know. Even we in

Ireland have been known to differ from each other. But you see the

Pope denouncing the Bolshevists, or the French Revolution rending

the Holy Roman Empire, and you still say in your hearts, ‘What can

the difference be betwixt Tweedledum and Tweedledee?’”

“There was no difference,” said Pond, “between Tweedledum and

Tweedledee. You will remember that it is distinctly recorded that

they agreed. But remember what they agreed about.”

Wotton looked a little baffled and finally grunted: “Well, if

these fellows have agreed, I suppose there will be a little peace.”

“Funny things, agreements,” said Pond. “Fortunately people

generally go on disagreeing, till they die peacefully in their

beds. Men very seldom do fully and finally agree. I did know two

men who came to agree so completely that one of them naturally

murdered the other; but as a rule …”

“‘Agreed so completely,’” said Wotton thoughtfully. “Don’t you—

are you quite sure you don’t mean: ‘Disagreed so completely’?”

Gahagan uttered a sort of low whoop of laughter. “Oh, no,” he

said, “he doesn’t mean that. I don’t know what the devil he does

mean; but he doesn’t mean anything so sensible as that.”

But Wotton, in his ponderous way, still attempted to pin down the

narrator to a more responsible statement; and the upshot of it was

that Mr. Pond was reluctantly induced to explain what he really

meant and let us hear the whole story.

The mystery was involved at first in another mystery: the strange

murder of Mr. James Haggis, of Glasgow, which filled the Scottish

and English newspapers not many years ago. On the face of it, the

thing was a curious story; to introduce a yet more curious sequel.

Haggis had been a prominent and wealthy citizen, a bailie of the

city and an elder of the kirk. Nobody denied that even in these

capacities he had sometimes been rather unpopular; but, to do him

justice, he had often been unpopular through his loyalty to

unpopular causes. He was the sort of old Radical who is more rigid

and antiquated than any Tory; and, maintaining in theory the cause

of Retrenchment and Reform, he managed to suggest that almost any

Reform was too expensive for the needs of Retrenchment. Thus he

had stood alone in opposition to the universal support given to old

Dr. Campbell’s admirable campaign for fighting the epidemic in the

slums during the slump. But to deduce from his economics that he

was a demon delighting in the sight of poor children dying of

typhoid was perhaps an exaggerated inference. Similarly, he was

prominent in the Presbyterian councils as refusing all modern

compromise with the logic of Calvinism; but to infer that he

actually hoped all his neighbours were damned before they were born

is too personal an interpretation of theological theory.

On the other side, he was admittedly honest in business and

faithful to his wife and family; so that there was a general

reaction in favour of his memory when he was found stabbed to the

heart in the meagre grass of the grim little churchyard that

adjoined his favourite place of worship. It was impossible to

imagine Mr. Haggis as involved in any romantic Highland feud

calling for the dirk, or any romantic assignation interrupted with

the stiletto; and it was generally fell that to be knifed and left

unburied among the buried dead was an exaggerated penalty for being

a rather narrow Scottish merchant of the old school.

It happened that Mr. Pond himself had been present at a little

party where there was high debate about the murder as a mystery.

His host, Lord Glenorchy, had a hobby of reading books on

criminology; his hostess, Lady Glenorchy, had the less harmful

hobby of reading those much more solid and scientific books which

are called detective stories. There were present, as the society

papers say, Major MacNabb, the Chief Constable, and Mr. Lancelot

Browne, a brilliant London barrister who found it much more of a

bore to be a lawyer than to pretend to be a detective; also, among

those present, was the venerable and venerated Dr. Campbell, whose

work among the poor has already been inadequately commended, and a

young friend of his named Angus, whom he was understood to be

coaching and instructing generally for his medical examinations and

his scientific career.

Responsible people naturally love to be irresponsible. All these

persons delighted to throw theories about in private which they

need not answer for in public. The barrister, being a humane man,

was delighted to prosecute somebody whom he would not have to hang.

The criminologist was enchanted to analyse the lunacy of somebody

he could never have proved to be a lunatic. And Lady Glenorchy was

charmed at the chance of considering poor Mr. Haggis (of all

people) as the principal character in a shocker. Hilarious

attempts were made to fix the crime on the United Presbyterian

minister, a notorious Sublapsarian, naturally, nay inevitably,

impelled to stick a dirk in a Supralapsarian. Lord Glenorchy was

more serious, not to say monotonous. Having learnt from his books

of criminology the one great discovery of that science, that mental

and moral deformity are found only among poor people, he suspected

a plot of local Communists (all with the wrong-shaped thumb and

ear) and picked for his fancy a Socialist agitator of the city.

Mr. Angus made bold to differ; his choice was an old lag, or

professional criminal, known to be in the place, who had been

almost everything that is alarming except a Socialist agitator.

Then it was that the point was referred, not without a certain

reverence, to the white-haired and wise old physician, who had now

behind him a whole lifetime of charity and good works. One of the

many ways in which Dr. Campbell seemed to have emerged from an

elder and perhaps honester world was the fact that he not only

spoke with a Scottish accent but he spoke Scottish. His speech

will, therefore, be rendered here with difficulty and in doubt and

trembling.

“Weel, ye will a’ be asking wha dirked Jamie Haggis? And I’ll tell

ye fair at the start that I winna gie a bawbee to ken wha dirked

Jamie Haggis. Gin I kent, I wadna’ say. It’s a sair thing, na

doot, that the freens and benefactors o’ puir humanity should no be

named and fitly celebrated; but like the masons that built our

gran’ cathedral and the gran’ poets that wrote our ballads of

Otterburn and Sir Patrick Spens, the man that achieved the virtuous

act o’ killing Jamie Haggis will ha’e nae pairsonal credit for’t in

this world; it is even possible he might be a wee bit inconvenienced.

So ye’ll get nae guesses out of me; beyond saying I’ve lang been

seekin’ a man of sic prudence and public spirit.”

There followed that sort of silence in which people are not certain

whether to laugh, at a deliberate stroke of wit; but before they

could do so, young Angus, who kept his eyes fixed on his venerable

preceptor, had spoken with the eagerness of the ardent student.

“But you’ll not say, Dr. Campbell, that murder is right because

some acts or opinions of the murdered man are wrong?”

“Aye, if they’re wrang enough,” replied the benevolent Dr. Campbell

blandly. “After all, we’ve nae ither test o’ richt and wrang.

Salus populi suprema lex.”

“Aren’t the Ten Commandments a bit of a test?” asked the young man,

with a rather heated countenance, emphasized by his red hair, that

stood up on his head like stiff flames.

The silver-haired saint of sociology continued to regard him with a

wholly benevolent smile; but there was an odd gleam in his eye as

he answered:

“Aye, the Ten Commandments are a test. What we doctors are

beginning to ca’ an Intelligence Test.”

Whether it was an accident, or whether the intuitions of Lady

Glenorchy were a little alarmed by the seriousness of the subject,

it was at this point that she struck in.

“Well, if Dr. Campbell won’t pronounce for us, I suppose we must

all stick to our own suspicions. I don’t know whether you like

cigarettes in the middle of dinner; it’s a fashion I can’t get used

to myself.”

At this point in his narrative, Mr. Pond threw himself back in his

chair with a more impatient movement than he commonly permitted

himself.

“Of course, they will do it,” he said, with a mild explosiveness.

“They’re admired and thought very tactful when they do it.”

“When who do what?” said Wotton. “What on earth are you talking

about now?”

“I’m talking about hostesses,” said Pond, with an air of pain.

“Good hostesses. Really successful hostesses. They will cut into

conversation, on the theory that it can be broken off anywhere.

Just as it’s quite the definition of a good hostess to make two

people talk when they hate it, and part them when they are

beginning to like it. But they sometimes do the most deadly and

awful damage. You see, they stop conversations that are not worth

starting again. And that’s horrible, like murder.”

“But if the conversation’s not worth starting again, why is it

horrible to stop it?” asked the conscientious Wotton, still

laboriously in pursuit.

“Why, THAT’S why it’s horrible to stop it,” answered Pond, almost

snappishly for so polite a person. “Talk ought to be sacred

because it is so light, so tenuous, so trivial, if you will;

anyhow, so frail and easy to destroy. Cutting short its life is

worse than murder; it’s infanticide. It’s like killing a baby

that’s trying to come to life. It can never be restored to life,

though one rose from the dead. A good light conversation can never

be put together again when it’s broken to pieces; because you can’t

get all the pieces. I remember a splendid talk at Trefusis’s

place, that began because there was a crack of thunder over the

house and a cat howled in the garden, and somebody made a rather

crude joke about a catastrophe. And then Gahagan here had a

perfectly lovely theory that sprang straight out of cats and

catastrophes and everything, and would have started a splendid talk

about a political question on the Continent.”

“The Catalonian question, I suppose,” said Gahagan, laughing, “but

I fear I’ve quite forgotten my lovely theory.”

“That’s just what I say,” said Pond, gloomily. “It could only have

been started then; it ought to have been sacred because it wasn’t

worth starting again. The hostess swept it all out of our heads,

and then had the cheek to say afterwards that we could talk about

it some other time. Could we? Could we make a contract with a

cloud to break just over the roof, and tie a cat up in the garden

and pull its tail at the right moment, and give Gahagan just enough

champagne to inspire him with a theory so silly that he’s forgotten

it already? It was then or never with that debate being started;

and yet bad results enough followed from it being stopped. But

that, as they say, is another story.”

“You must tell it to us another time,” said Gahagan. “At present I

am still curious about the man who murdered another man because he

agreed with him.”

“Yes,” assented Wotton, “we’ve rather strayed from the subject,

haven’t we?”

“So Mrs. Trefusis said,” murmured Mr. Pond sadly. “I suppose we

can’t all feel the sanctity of really futile conversation. But if

you’re really interested in the other matter, I don’t mind telling

you all about it; though I’d rather not tell you exactly how I came

to know all about it. That was rather a confidential matter—what

they call a confession. Pardon my little interlude on the tactful

hostess; it had something to do with what followed and I have a

reason for mentioning it.

“Lady Glenorchy quite calmly changed the subject from murder to

cigarettes; and everybody’s first feeling was that we had been done

out of a very entertaining little tiff about the Ten Commandments.

A mere trifle, too light and airy to recur to our minds at any

other time. But there was another trifle that did recur to my own

mind afterwards; and kept my attention on a murder of which I might

have thought little enough at the time, as De Quincey says. I

remembered once looking up Glenorchy in Who’s Who, and seeing that

he had married the daughter of a very wealthy squire near Lowestoft

in Suffolk.”

“Lowestoft, Suffolk. These are dark hints,” said Gahagan. “Do

these in themselves point to some awful and suspicious fact?”

“They point,” said Pond, “to the awful fact that Lady Glenorchy is

not Scottish. If she had introduced the cigarettes at her father’s

dinner-table in Suffolk, such trifles as the Ten Commandments would

instantly have been tossed away from everyone’s mind and memory.

But I knew I was in Scotland and that the story had only just

begun. I have told you that old Campbell was tutoring or coaching

young Angus for his medical degree. It was a great honour for a

lad like Angus to have Campbell for a coach; but it must have been

quite agreeable even to an authority like Campbell to have Angus

for a pupil. For he had always been a most industrious and

ambitious and intelligent pupil, and one likely to do the old man

credit; and after the time I speak of, he seemed to grow more

industrious and ambitious than ever. In fact, he shut himself up

so exclusively with his coach that he failed in his examination.

That was what first convinced me that my guess was right.”

“And very lucid, too,” said Gahagan with a grin. “He worked so

hard with his coach that he failed in his examination. Another

statement that might seem to some to require expansion.”

“It’s very simple, really,” said Mr. Pond innocently. “But in

order to expand it, we must go back for a moment to the mystery of

Mr. Haggis’s murder. It had already spread a sort of detective

fever in the neighbourhood; for all the Scots love arguing and it

really was rather a fascinating riddle. One great point in the

mystery was the wound, which seemed at first to have been made by a

dirk or dagger of some kind but was afterwards found by the experts

to demand a different instrument of rather peculiar shape.

Moreover, the district had been combed for knives and daggers; and

temporary suspicion fixed on any wild youths from beyond the

Highland line, who might retain an historic tenderness for the

possession of dirks. All the medical authorities agreed that the

instrument had been something more subtle than a dirk, though no

medical authorities would consent even to guess what it was.

People were perpetually ransacking the churchyard and the church in

search of clues. And just about this time young Angus, who had

been a strict supporter of this particular church, and had even

once induced his old tutor and friend to sit under its minister for

one evening service, suddenly left off going there; indeed, he left

off going to any church at all. So I realized that I was still on

the right track.”

“Oh,” said Wotton blankly, “so you realized that you were still on

the right track.”

“I fear I did not realize that you were on any track,” said

Gahagan. “To speak with candour, my dear Pond, I should say that

of all the trackless and aimless and rambling human statements I

have ever heard, the most rambling was the narrative we have just

been privileged to hear from you. First you tell us that two

Scotsmen began a conversation about the morality of murder and

never finished it; then you go off on a tirade against society

hostesses; then you reveal the horrid fact that one of them came

from Lowestoft; then you go back to one of the Scotsmen and say he

failed to pass his examination because he worked so hard with his

tutor; then, pausing for a moment upon the peculiar shape of an

undiscovered dagger, you tell us that the Scotsman has left off

going to church and you are on the right track. Frankly, if you

really do find something sacred about futile conversation, I should

say that you were on the track of that all right.”

“I know,” said Mr. Pond patiently, “all I’ve said is quite relevant

to what really happened; but, of course, you don’t know what really

happened. A story always does seem rambling and futile if you

leave out what really happened. That’s why newspapers are so dull.

All the political news, and much of the polite news (though rather

higher in tone than the other), is made quite bewildering and

pointless by the necessity of telling stories without telling the

story.”

“Well, then,” said Gahagan, “let us try to get some sense out of

all this nonsense, which has not even the excuses of newspaper

nonsense. To take one of your nonsense remarks as a test, why do

you say that Angus failed to pass because he worked so much with

his coach?”

“Because he didn’t work with his coach,” replied Pond. “Because I

didn’t say he worked with his coach. At least I didn’t say he

worked for the examination. I said he was with his coach. I said

he spent days and nights with his coach; but they weren’t preparing

for any examination.”

“Well, what were they doing?” asked Wotton gruffly.

“They were going on with the argument,” cried Pond, in a squeak

that was almost shrill. “They hardly stopped to sleep or eat; but

they went on with the argument; the argument interrupted at the

dinner-table. Have you never known any Scotsmen? Do you suppose

that a woman from Suffolk with a handful of cigarettes, and a

mouthful of irrelevance, can stop two Scotsmen from going on with

an argument when they’ve started it? They began it again when they

were getting their hats and coats; they were at it hammer and tongs

as they went out of the gate, and only a Scottish poet can describe

what they did then:

And the tane went hame with the ither; and then,

The tither went hame with the ither again.

“And for hours and weeks and months they never turned aside from

the same interminable debate on the thesis first propounded by Dr.

Campbell: that when a good man is well and truly convinced that a

bad man is actively bad for the community, and is doing evil on a

large scale which cannot be checked by law or any other action, the

good man has a moral right to murder the bad man, and thereby only

increases his own goodness.”

Pond paused a moment, pulling his beard and staring at the table;

then he began again:

“For reasons I’ve already mentioned but not explained—”

“That’s what’s the matter with you, my boy,” said Gahagan genially.

“There are always such a damned lot of things you have mentioned

but not explained.”

“For those reasons,” went on Pond deliberately, “I happen to know a

great deal about the stages of that stubborn and forcible

controversy, about which nobody else knew anything at all. For

Angus was a genuine truth-seeker who wished to satisfy his soul and

not merely to make his name; and Campbell was enough of a great man

to be quite as anxious to convince a pupil as to convince a crowd

in a lecture-room. But I am not going to tell you about those

stages of the controversy at any great length. To tell the truth,

I am not what people call impartial on this controversy. How any

man can form any conviction, and remain what they call impartial on

any controversy, is more than I have ever understood. But I

suppose they would say I couldn’t describe the debate fairly;

because the side I sympathize with was not the side that won.

“Society hostesses, especially when they come from near Lowestoft,

do not know where an argument is tending. They will drop not only

bricks but bombshells; and then expect them not to explode.

Anyhow, I knew where that argument at Glenorchy’s table was

tending. When Angus made a test of the Ten Commandments, and

Campbell said they were an Intelligence Test, I knew what would

come next. In another minute, he would be saying that nobody of

intelligence now troubles about the Ten Commandments.

“What a disguise there is in snowy hair and the paternal stoop of

age! Dickens somewhere describes a patriarch who needed no virtue

except his white hair. As Dr. Campbell smiled across the table at

Angus, most people saw nothing in that smile but patriarchal and

parental kindness. But I happened to see also a glint in the eye.

which told me that the old man was quite as much of a fighter as

the red-haired boy who had rashly challenged him. In some odd way,

indeed, I seemed suddenly to see old age itself as a masquerade.

The white hair had turned into a white wig, the powder of the

eighteenth century; and the smiling face underneath it was the face

of Voltaire.

“Dr. Andrew Glenlyon Campbell was a real philanthropist; so was

Voltaire. It is not always certain whether philanthropy means a

love of men, or of man, or of mankind. There is a difference. I

think he cared less about the individual than about the public or

the race; hence doubtless his gentle eccentricity of defending an

act of private execution. But anyhow, I knew he was one of the

grim line of Scottish sceptics, from Hume down to Ross or

Robertson. And, whatever else they are, they are stubborn and

stick to their point. Angus also was stubborn, and as I have

already said, he was a devout worshipper in the same dingy kirk as

the late James Haggis; that is, one of the extreme irreconcilable

sectaries of the seventeenth-century Puritanism. And so the

Scottish atheist and the Scottish Calvinist argued and argued and

argued, until milder races might have expected them to drop down

dead with fatigue. But it was not of disagreement that either of

them died.

“But the advantage was with the older and more learned man in his

attack; and you must remember that the younger man had only a

rather narrow and provincial version of the creed to defend. As I

say, I will not bore you with the arguments; I confess they rather

bore me. Doubtless Dr. Campbell said that the Ten Commandments

could not be of divine origin, because two of them are mentioned by

the virtuous Emperor Foo Chi, in the Second Dynasty; or one of them

is paraphrased by Synesius of Samothrace and attributed to the lost

code of Lycurgus.”

“Who was Synesius of Samothrace?” inquired Gahagan, with an

appearance of sudden and eager curiosity.

“He was a mythical character of the Minoan Age first discovered in

the twentieth century A.D.,” replied the unruffled Pond. “I made

him up just now; but you know the sort of thing I mean—the

mythical nature of Mount Sinai proved from the parallel myth that

the ark rested on Mount Ararat, and the mountain that would not

come to Mahomet. But all this textual criticism really affects a

religion only founded on texts. I knew how the fight was going;

and I knew when it ended. I knew when Robert Angus left off going

to kirk on the Sabbath.”

The end of the debate may best be described more directly; for,

indeed, Mr. Pond described it himself with a strange sort of

directness; almost as if he had unaccountably been present, or had

seen it in a vision. Anyhow, it appears that the operating-theatre

of the medical schools was the scene of the final phase of

disagreement and agreement. They had gone back there very late at

night, when the schools were closed and the theatre deserted,

because Angus fancied he had left some of his instruments there,

which it would be more neat and proper to lock up. There was no

sound in that hollow place but the echo of their own footsteps, and

very little light save a faint moonshine that trickled through the

cracks between the curtained windows. Angus had retrieved his

operating-tool, and was turning again towards the steep stairs that

climbed through the semi-circular rows of seats, when Campbell said

to him casually.

“Ye’ll find the facts I mentioned aboot the Aztec hymns in the—”

Angus tossed the tool on the table like a man throwing down his

sword, and turned on his companion with a new and transfigured air

of candour and finality.

“You needn’t trouble about hymns any more; I may as well tell you

that I’ve done with them, for one. You’re too strong for me—or,

rather, the truth is too strong for me. I’ve defended my own

nursery nightmare as long as I could; but you’ve woken me up at

last. You are right, you must be right; I don’t see any way out of

it.”

After a silence, Campbell answered very softly: “I’ll no mak’

apologies for fighting for the truth; but, man, ye made a real

bonny fight for the falsehood.”

It might well have seemed that the old blasphemer had never spoken

on the topic in a tone so delicate and respectful; and it seemed

strange that his new convert did not respond to the appeal.

Looking up, Campbell saw that his new convert’s attention had been

abruptly abstracted; he was standing staring at the implement in

his hand: a surgical knife made upon an odd pattern for special

purposes. At last he said in a hoarse and almost inaudible voice:

“A knife of an unusual shape.”

“See report o’ inquest on Jamie Haggis,” said the old man, nodding

benevolently. “Aye, ye’ve guessed richt, I’m thinking.” Then,

after a pause, he added, with equal calm:

“Noo that we are agreed, and a’ of one mind, aboot the need for sic

social surgery, it’s as weel ye should know the hale truth. Aye,

lad, I did it mysel’; and with a blade like yon. That nicht ye

took me to the kirk—weel, it’s the fairst time, I hope, I’ve ever

been hypocreetical; but I stayed behind to pray, and I think ye had

hopes of my convairsion. But I prayed because Jamie prayed; and

when he rose from his prayers, I followed him and killed him i’ the

kirkyard.”

Angus was still looking at the knife in silence; then he said

suddenly: “Why did you kill him?”

“Ye needna ask, noo we are agreed in moral philosophy,” replied the

old doctor simply. “It was just plain surgery. As we sacrifice a

finger to save the body, so we maun sacrifice a man to save the

body politic. I killed him because he was doing evil, and

inhumanly preventing what was guid for humanity: the scheme for the

slums and the lave. And I understand that, upon reflection, ye tak

the same view.”

Angus nodded grimly.

The proverb asks: “Who shall decide when doctors disagree?” But

in that dark and ominous theatre of doctoring the doctors agreed.

“Yes,” said Angus, “I take the same view. Also, I have had the

same experience.”

“And what’s that?” inquired the other.

“I have had daily dealings with a man I thought was doing nothing

but evil,” answered Angus. “I still think you were doing evil;

even though you were serving truth. You have convinced me that my

beliefs were dreams; but not that dreaming is worse than waking up.

You brutally broke the dreams of the humble, sneered at the weak

hopes of the bereaved. You seem cruel and inhuman to me, just as

Haggis seemed cruel and inhuman to you. You are a good man by your

own code, but so was Haggis a good man by his code. He did not

pretend to believe in salvation by good works, any more than you

pretended to believe in the Ten Commandments. He was good to

individuals, but the crowd suffered; you are good to the crowd and

an individual suffered. But, after all, you also are only an

individual.”

Something in the last words, that were said very softly, made the

old doctor stiffen suddenly and then start backwards towards the

steps behind. Angus sprang like a wildcat and pinned him to his

place with a choking violence; still talking, but now at the top of

his voice.

“Day after day, I have itched and tingled to kill you; and been

held back only by the superstition you have destroyed tonight. Day

after day, you have been battering down the scruples which alone

defended you from death. You wise thinker; you wary reasoner; you

fool! It would be better for you to-night if I still believed in

God and in his Commandment against murder.”

The old man twisted speechlessly in the throttling grip, but he was

too feeble, and Angus flung him with a crash across the operating-

table, where he lay as if fainting. Round them and above them the

empty tiers of concentric seats glimmered in the faint and frigid

moonlight as desolate as the Colosseum under the moon; a deserted

amphitheatre where there was no human voice to cry “Habet!” The

red-haired slayer stood with the knife uplifted, as strange in

shape as the flint knife of some prehistoric sacrifice; and still

he talked on in the high tones of madness.

“One thing alone protected you and kept the peace between us: that

we disagreed. Now we agree, now we are at one in thought—and

deed, I can do as you would do. I can do as you have done. We are

at peace.”

And with the sound of that word he struck; and Andrew Campbell

moved for the last time. In his own cold temple, upon his own

godless altar … he stirred and then lay still; and the murderer

bent and fled from the building and from the city and across the

Highland line at night, to hide himself in the hills.

When Pond had told this story, Gahagan rose slowly to his gigantic

height and knocked out his cigar in an ashtray: “I darkly suspect,

Pond,” he said, “that you are not quite so irrelevant as you sound.

Not quite irrelevant, I mean, even to our opening talk about

European affairs.”

“Tweedledum and Tweedledee agreed—to have a battle,” said Pond.

“We are rather easily satisfied with saying that some people like

Poles or Prussians or other foreigners have agreed. We don’t often

ask what they’ve agreed on. But agreement can be rather risky,

unless it’s agreement with the truth.”

Wotton looked at him with a smouldering suspicion; but finally

decided, with a sigh of relief, that it was only metaphysics.

POND THE PANTALOON

“No, no, no,” said Mr. Pond, with a gentle shrillness which he

occasionally showed, when any doubt was thrown on the prosaic

precision of his statements or arguments. “I did not say it was a

red pencil, and that was why it made such black marks. I said it

was relatively a red pencil, or resembled a red pencil, as compared

with Wotton’s view in regarding it as a blue pencil; and THAT was

why it made such black marks. The distinction may seem a small

one; but I assure you the most enormous errors arise out of this

habit of taking a remark out of its context, and then stating it

not quite correctly. The most ordinary and obvious truths, when

reported in that way, may be made to sound almost absurd.”

“Almost,” said Captain Gahagan, nodding gravely and gazing at the

little man opposite him, rather as if he were a mysterious monster

in a tank.

Mr. Pond was in his private tank, or private office, in a hive of

Government offices, sitting at a desk and busy at the work of blue-

pencilling the proofs of some official report; whence had arisen

the talk about the colour of the pencil. Pond, in short, was doing

his morning’s work as usual; Peter Gahagan was doing nothing, also

as usual; his large figure lounged in a chair that looked too small

for him; he was attached to Mr. Pond and even more attached to

watching other people work.

“I may resemble Polonius,” said Pond, modestly; and, indeed, his

old-fashioned beard, owlish expression and official courtliness

made the comparison almost apt. “I may be like Polonius; but I am

not Polonius—which is just the point I wish to illustrate. Hamlet

told Polonius that a cloud in the sky was like a camel. The effect

would have been somewhat different if Hamlet had stated, seriously

and scientifically, that he had seen a camel in the sky. In that

case, Polonius might have been pardoned in regarding the Prince’s

madness as finally proved. Touchy officials have been known to

express the view that you, my dear Gahagan, come into this office

like a buffalo, and there ‘lie wallowing through the long summer

day,’ as an outmoded poet puts it. But if the authorities of the

Zoo sent for you on the ground that you actually WERE a buffalo,

the department would hardly move in the matter without further

inquiries.”

“No doubt you have my dossier,” said Gahagan, “with official

calculations and statistics about the number of my legs, not to

mention my horns; all annotated with blue and red pencil—and most

certainly with some very black marks against my name. But that

brings me back to the original subject of my simple wonder. You

hardly seem to have noticed what was really peculiar in your own

remark. In any case, I do not quite understand what you mean by a

pencil being relatively red… .”

“Even that phrase might be defended,” observed Mr. Pond, with a

faint smile. “You would say, for instance, that my notes on this

proof are in blue pencil; and yet—” He held out a pencil with its

red chalk point towards the other. It looked like a mild conjuring

trick, until he twiddled it so as to show it was one of those

pencils sold by most stationers, with red at one end and blue at

the other. “Now suppose I wear down the blue point till it has

nearly gone (and really the misprints they can put into a simple

report on Baluchistan Bimetallism are incredible), then you would

say the pencil was relatively red, though still perhaps rather

blue. If the red end were worn away, you would say it was mostly

blue, though a little red.”

“I should say nothing of the sort,” exclaimed Gahagan with abrupt

impatience. “I should say what I said before; that the queer thing

about you is that you are quite blind to what was really mad in

your statement. You can’t see the paradox in your own remark. You

can’t see the point of your own remark.”

“The point of my remark,” said Mr. Pond, with dignity, “which I

thought I had made sufficiently clear, was that people are very

inexact in reporting statements, as in cases like a camel and

‘something like a camel.’”

Peter Gahagan continued to stare with round eyes at his friend,

like a buffalo in a very ruminant phase; and eventually heaved

himself up, collecting his grey top-hat and walking-stick with a

sort of clatter.

“No,” he said, “I will not point out the point. It would be

breaking a crystal or shattering a perfectly rounded soap-bubble.

To pierce the pure and spherical perfection of your maniacal calm

would be like invading the innocence of a child. If you really and

truly do not know when you are talking nonsense, if you do not even

notice what part of it is nonsense, I feel I must leave your

nonsensical intellect intact. I will go and talk it over with

Wotton. As he has often breezily observed, there is no nonsense

about him.”

And he sauntered out of the room, swinging his stick, in the

direction of the very important department presided over by Sir

Hubert Wotton; that he might enjoy the inspiriting spectacle of

another friend doing his day’s work and being interrupted by an

idle man.

Sir Hubert Wotton, however, was of a type somewhat different from

Mr. Pond; in that, even if he was busy, he was never fussy. Mr.

Pond was bent over the poised point of his blue pencil; Sir Hubert

was first visible behind the red end of a cigar, which he was

puffing, with a frown of reflection, as he turned over the papers

on his desk. He recognized the entry of the beaming Captain with a

grim but not ungracious smile, and waved him to a seat.

Gahagan sat down with his hands crossed on his stick and thumped it

on the floor.

“Wotton,” he said, “I’ve solved the problem of the Paradoxes of

Pond. He doesn’t know when he’s said these crazy things. There’s

a blind spot on his excellent brain, or a cloud comes over his mind

for a moment; and he forgets that he’s even said anything peculiar.

He goes on arguing about the reasonable part of his speech; he

never stops to explain the only thing that was really unreasonable.

He talked to me quite sensibly about a pencil that was bright red,

or something like it, and therefore marked very black on the paper.

I tried to nail him to that piece of inconsequence; and he

completely eluded me. He went on talking about when a blue pencil

was not a blue pencil; but he somehow forgot all about the black

marks.”

“Black marks!” said Wotton; and sat up so abruptly that he spilt

the ash of his cigar over his usually immaculate waistcoat. He

dusted off the defilement with a frown; and then, after a pause,

spoke in the staccato fashion that occasionally revealed that he

was much less conventional than he looked.

“Most fellows who talk paradoxes are only trying to show off. It’s

not like that with Pond; he does it because he’s trying NOT to show

off. You see—he looks a very sedentary, scientific little cuss,

as if he’d never been unhooked from a desk or a typewriter; but

he’s really had some very extraordinary experiences. He doesn’t

talk about them; he doesn’t want to talk about them; but he does

want to talk about reason and philosophy and theoretical things in

books; you know he loves reading all the rational eighteenth-

century literature. But when, in the course of talking in the

abstract, he comes on some concrete thing that he has actually DONE—

well, I can only say he crumples it up. He tries to crush it into

a small space and it simply sounds contradictory. Almost every one

of those crazy sentences simply stands for one of the adventures in

what would be called by most people a very unadventurous life.”

“I think I see what you mean,” said Gahagan, after a pause of

radiant reflection. “Yes, you’re right. You can’t expect me to be

taken in, mind you, by most of your swagger of stoicism in the

English public-school man. Half the time they are simply showing

off by not showing off. But in Pond it’s genuine. He really does

hate the limelight; in that way you may say he was made for the

Secret Service. And you mean that he only becomes mysterious, in

this particular manner, when he really does want to keep the secret

of his services. In other words, you mean there is a story behind

every paradox of Pond. Certainly that is true—of all those cases

when I have been told the story.”

“I know all about this story,” said Wotton, “and it was one of the

most remarkable things that Pond ever did. It was a matter of

immense importance—the sort of public affair that has to be kept a

very private affair. Pond gave two pieces of advice, which some

thought very odd and which turned out exactly right; and he ended

by making a rather extraordinary discovery. I don’t know how he

came to mention it just now; but I’m pretty sure it was by

accident. When it turned up, he tried to tuck it away again in a

hurry and change the subject. But he certainly saved England; also

he nearly got killed.”

“What!” exclaimed Gahagan with some astonishment.

“The fellow must have fired five times at him,” said Wotton

reminiscently, “before he turned the sixth shot on himself.”

“Well, I’m blowed,” said the Captain elegantly. “I always thought

Pond the most charming of tea-table comedies; I never knew he

figured in a melodrama. I should as soon have thought of his

figuring in a fairy-pantomime. But he seems somehow associated

with theatrical things at the moment. He asked me himself if he

was like Polonius; and I suppose some malicious people would say he

was more like Pantaloon. I like the notion of you and he magically

transplanted to a Christmas pantomime: ‘Harlequin Hubert and the

Fairies’ Pond,’ all ending with a real Harlequinade, with red fire

and the Pantaloon falling over the Policeman. Pardon my talking

nonsense—you know my unfortunate mind only becomes fertile about

impossible things.”

“It’s curious you should call it impossible,” said Sir Hubert

Wotton, knitting his brows, “because that’s almost exactly what

really happened to us.”

Sir Hubert Wotton showed a certain reticence and deliberate

vagueness about the official details of the story; even in telling

it after so many years to an intimate friend. In England

especially, there are enormous events which never get into the

newspapers, and are apparently intended never to get into the

history-books. It may be enough to say here that there was at one

time under the surface, but very near to the surface, a conspiracy

aiming at a coup d’état, which was backed by a Continental Power of

similar leanings. Gun-running, secret drilling and plans for

stealing State documents were involved; and it was feared that a

certain number of minor officials had been corrupted or converted

by the conspirators. Hence, when it was a question of sending

certain very private official documents (about the nature of which

Wotton remained somewhat hazy to the end) from one of the great

northern ports to a particular Government department in London, the

first Council was a very small and select one, presided over by Sir

Hubert and held in the smaller office of Mr. Pond. Indeed, Mr.

Pond was the official in charge of the job. The only other person

permanently present was one of the first officials from Scotland

Yard; Wotton had brought his clerk with him to arrange and explain

certain matters; but had later made an excuse for sending the man

out on an errand. Dyer, the detective from the Yard, a heavy-

shouldered, hard-headed person with a toothbrush moustache,

explained methodically, if a little mechanically, the precautions

and arrangements he would consider necessary for protecting the

transport of the papers to their destination. He wanted an

armoured car with a machine-gun, a certain number of men carrying

concealed arms, a police search of everybody involved in first

dispatching and in finally receiving the box or parcel—and several

other conditions of the kind.

“Pond will think all this terribly expensive,” said Wotton, with a

sad smile. “Pond is quite the Old Liberal in the matter of economy

and retrenchment. But he will agree that we are all bound to show

particular care in this case.”

“N-no,” said Mr. Pond, pursing his lips dubiously. “I don’t think

I should show any particular care in this case.”

“Not show any particular care!” repeated the astonished Wotton.

“I certainly shouldn’t SHOW it,” said Mr. Pond. “In such cases,

nobody of sense would take such particular precautions, any more

than anybody would send an important letter by registered post.”

“Well, you must pardon my dullness,” said Sir Hubert, “but, as a

matter of fact, I have heard of people sending an important letter

by registered post.”

“It is done, I believe,” said Mr. Pond, with distant disparagement.

“But that is when you are trying to prevent a letter being lost.

Just now you are trying to prevent a letter being found.”

“That sounds rather interesting,” said Dyer, with some restrained

amusement.

“Don’t you see? It’s quite simple,” answered Pond. “If you want

to prevent a document from being dropped down a drain, or thrown

into a dustbin, or used to light the fire or to make a bird’s nest,

or any other accident of neglect, then it is a good thing to draw

attention to it, by stamping or sealing or safeguarding it in some

particular way. But if you want to prevent it from being tracked

and spotted and snatched out of your hands, by violence or

stratagem, then it’s the worst thing in the world to mark it in a

particular way. Registration, for instance, doesn’t mean that your

messenger can’t be knocked on the head or have his pocket picked.

It only means that your messenger or his department can be held

responsible; may have to apologize or compensate. But you don’t

want apologies or compensations; you want the letter. I should say

it would be far safer from a watchful enemy, if it were unmarked

and sent along with a thousand others looking exactly the same.”

It is a tribute to the essential shrewdness, underlying the

apparent woodenness of Wotton and Dyer, that the paradox of Pond

prevailed. The documents, however, were too bulky to be treated as

ordinary letters; and after some discussion, they were placed in

one of a large number of white wooden boxes, light and not very

large, which were in general use for sending chocolate and other

provisions to the army or navy or some branches of the public

service. The only part of his original program on which the hard-

headed Dyer continued to insist was that of putting guards and

searchers at essential points of the route of travel.

“I suppose there’ll be some damned fuss about it afterwards,” he

said, “and people will pester us about interfering with the liberty

of the subject. We’re handicapped in this confounded constitutional

country. Now if we were in—”

He shut his mouth rather sharply, as a discreet knock sounded on

con aria nostalgica, “prima di rivolgere il sesto colpo contro se stesso.”

“Beh, che mi venga un colpo,” disse il Capitano con eleganza. “Ho sempre pensato

che Pond fosse la più deliziosa delle commedie da salotto; non l’avrei mai creduto

protagonista di un melodramma. Tanto varrebbe immaginarlo

nei panni di una pantomima delle fate. Eppure pare in qualche modo legato

alle cose teatrali, di questi tempi. Mi ha chiesto lui stesso se

somigliasse a Polonio; e immagino che qualche malalingua direbbe che

somiglia piuttosto a Pantalone. Mi piace l’idea di voi due magicamente

trasportati in una pantomima natalizia: ‘Arlecchino Hubert e lo

Stagno delle Fate,’ il tutto con una vera arlecchinata finale, col fuoco rosso

e Pantalone che ruzzola addosso al Poliziotto. Perdonate le mie

sciocchezze — sapete che la mia sventurata mente diventa feconda solo intorno alle

cose impossibili.”

“È curioso che la definiate impossibile,” disse Sir Hubert

Wotton, aggrottando le sopracciglia, “perché è quasi esattamente ciò che

ci accadde davvero.”

Sir Hubert Wotton mostrò una certa reticenza e una deliberata

vaghezza sui dettagli ufficiali della vicenda; persino nel narrarla

dopo tanti anni a un amico intimo. In Inghilterra

soprattutto, vi sono eventi enormi che non finiscono mai sui

giornali, e paiono destinati a non finire mai sui

libri di storia. Basti dire qui che vi fu, a un certo

tempo sotto la superficie, ma assai vicino ad essa, una cospirazione

mirante a un colpo di Stato, appoggiata da una Potenza continentale di

simili inclinazioni. Contrabbando d’armi, addestramenti segreti e piani per

rubare documenti di Stato erano in gioco; e si temeva che un

certo numero di funzionari minori fosse stato corrotto o convertito

dai cospiratori. Perciò, quando si trattò di inviare

certi documenti ufficiali assai riservati (sulla natura dei quali

Wotton rimase alquanto vago sino alla fine) da uno dei grandi

porti settentrionali a un particolare dicastero del Governo a Londra, il

primo Consiglio fu assai ristretto e scelto, presieduto da Sir

Hubert e tenuto nell’ufficio più piccolo del signor Pond. Anzi, il signor

Pond era il funzionario incaricato del compito. L’unica altra persona

presente in permanenza era uno dei più alti funzionari di Scotland

Yard; Wotton aveva portato con sé il proprio impiegato per sistemare e spiegare

certe faccende; ma aveva poi trovato un pretesto per mandarlo

fuori a sbrigare una commissione. Dyer, il detective dello Yard, un uomo dalle

spalle massicce e la testa dura, con baffetti a spazzolino,

spiegò metodicamente, seppur un po’ meccanicamente, le precauzioni

e le disposizioni che riteneva necessarie per proteggere il

trasporto delle carte fino a destinazione. Voleva un’

auto blindata con una mitragliatrice, un certo numero di uomini che portavano

armi nascoste, una perquisizione di polizia su tutti coloro coinvolti nel primo

invio e nella ricezione finale della scatola o del pacco — e svariate

altre condizioni del genere.

“Pond troverà tutto questo terribilmente dispendioso,” disse Wotton, con un

sorriso triste. “Pond è un vero Vecchio Liberale in fatto di economia

e tagli di spesa. Ma converrà che siamo tutti tenuti a mostrare

particolare cura in questo caso.”

“N-no,” disse il signor Pond, storcendo le labbra dubbioso. “Non credo

che mostrerei alcuna particolare cura in questo caso.”

“Non mostrare alcuna particolare cura!” ripeté lo stupito Wotton.

“Di certo non la MOSTREREI,” disse il signor Pond. “In casi simili,

nessuno di buon senso prenderebbe precauzioni tanto particolari, non più

di quanto spedirebbe una lettera importante per posta raccomandata.”

“Beh, dovete perdonare la mia ottusità,” disse Sir Hubert, “ma, in

verità, ho sentito di gente che spedisce una lettera importante

per posta raccomandata.”

“Si usa, credo,” disse il signor Pond, con distaccato disprezzo.

“Ma è quando si cerca di impedire che una lettera vada perduta.

Ora invece cercate di impedire che una lettera venga trovata.”

“Interessante, questo,” disse Dyer, con un certo contenuto

divertimento.

“Non capite? È semplicissimo,” rispose Pond. “Se volete

impedire che un documento venga gettato in un tombino, o buttato

nella spazzatura, o usato per accendere il fuoco o per farne un nido d’uccello,

o qualsiasi altro incidente di trascuratezza, allora è bene richiamare

su di esso l’attenzione, timbrandolo o sigillandolo o proteggendolo in qualche

modo particolare. Ma se volete impedire che venga rintracciato

e individuato e strappato dalle vostre mani, con la violenza o

con l’astuzia, allora è la peggior cosa al mondo contrassegnarlo in modo

particolare. La raccomandazione, per esempio, non significa che il vostro

messaggero non possa esser colpito in testa o alleggerito delle tasche.

Significa solo che il vostro messaggero o il suo ufficio possono esser ritenuti

responsabili; possono dover chiedere scusa o risarcire. Ma voi non

volete scuse o risarcimenti; volete la lettera. Direi

che sarebbe assai più al sicuro da un nemico vigile, se fosse anonima

e spedita insieme ad altre mille dall’aspetto identico.”

È un omaggio all’acume di fondo, celato sotto

l’apparente rigidezza di Wotton e Dyer, che il paradosso di Pond

prevalse. I documenti, tuttavia, erano troppo voluminosi per esser trattati come

lettere ordinarie; e dopo qualche discussione, furono riposti in

una di un gran numero di scatole di legno bianco, leggere e non molto

grandi, comunemente usate per spedire cioccolato e altre

provviste all’esercito o alla marina o a qualche ramo del pubblico

servizio. L’unico punto del suo programma originario su cui il

testardo Dyer continuò a insistere fu quello di porre guardie e

controllori nei punti essenziali del percorso.

“Immagino che dopo ci sarà un maledetto putiferio,” disse

“e la gente ci tormenterà per aver interferito con la libertà

del cittadino. Siamo impacciati in questo dannato paese

costituzionale. Ora, se fossimo in—”

Chiuse la bocca di scatto, mentre un discreto bussare risuonava alla

the door, and Sir Hubert’s clerk glided in to say he had discharged

his commission. Sir Hubert did not see him at first, his frowning

gaze being fixed on the railway-map of the route to be pursued; and

Dyer happened at the moment to be examining very closely the white

deal box, which had already been selected and sent in as a sample.

But Mr. Pond noticed the clerk; and could not help thinking that he

was rather worth noticing. He was a young man named Franks, with

fair hair correctly flattened, and neat enough in figure and

costume; but his wide face had that indescribable look which is

sometimes seen, of which we can only say that it suggests the large

head on the little figure of a dwarf, or perhaps that sunken

between the shoulders of a hunchback; the face is not normal, even

upon a normal figure. But the other causes which arrested Mr.

Pond’s eye for a moment were, first, the fact that the clerk was

noticeably ill at ease when he silently handed papers to his

superior; and, last but not least, that he had started visibly when

he saw the detective from Scotland Yard.

The second Council, if it may be called so, was held in what all

agreed was the strategical centre of the whole manoeuvre: a certain

railway-junction in the Midlands. It so happened that the

consignment of boxes, along with mailbags and similar things, had

to be shifted here from one train to another, which came up

afterwards to the same platform. It was at this point that there

was most possibility of any interference from outside; and it is to

be feared that Dyer stretched several points in his reluctant

compromise with the British Constitution, in the matter of police

orders which stopped, detained or examined persons attempting to

enter or leave the station.

“I have told our people they mustn’t even let US out of the

station,” he said, “without close examination, for fear somebody

should have a fancy for dressing up as Mr. Pond.”

“It has quite a festive sound, so near Christmas,” said Mr. Pond

dolefully. “So I take it that for the present we must stay on the

station; and one can hardly say it looks particularly festive.”

Nothing, indeed, can well look more desolate than one of the

numerous side platforms of an empty railway-station on a dreary

winter day; unless it is the empty Third Class Waiting-Room which

is provided to be a human refuge from the winter blast. Somehow

the waiting-room looks even less human than the platform from which

it is a refuge; hung with a few printed notices that nobody could

possibly read, tables of trains or dusty plans of railways,

equipped in one corner with broken pens with which nobody could

write, and dried inkstands containing no ink to write with; with

one dab of dull colours, the faded advertisement of an insurance

company. It certainly seemed to the casual mind a godforsaken

place to be spending any part of Christmas; but Mr. Pond had a

stoical cheerfulness under such circumstances which rather

surprised those who only knew his catlike love of comfortable

domestic routine.

He entered this empty and unsightly apartment with a brisk step,

stopping for a moment to stare reflectively at the dried ink and

broken pens on the corner table.

“Well,” he said, turning away, “they couldn’t do very much with

those, anyhow; but, of course, they might have pencils or fountain-

pens. I’m rather glad I did it, on the whole.”

“Pond,” said Wotton gravely, “this is in your department anyhow;

and I’m sure that Dyer will agree that we’ve done well to follow

your advice so far. But I hope you don’t mind my having a mild

curiosity about what it is that you’ve done.”

“Not at all,” replied Pond. “Perhaps I ought to have told you

about it before. Very likely I ought to have done it before. But

just after you’d been good enough to let me have my own way, about

sending it along with all the other stuff in plain identical boxes,

I sat down and had a hard think about what would be the next best

precaution following on that. I’m pretty certain that if it had

been taken in a special car by armed men, that car would have been

wrecked and those armed men perhaps robbed by force of arms;

anyhow, there was too much of a risk of it. There’s a much more

elaborate gangster organization working against us already than

most people have any notion of; and to multiply purchases and

preparations is to multiply clues and transactions for their spies

to trail. But I don’t think the gangs could possibly get in here,

especially now that the police are holding the gates of all these

stations like fortresses. An isolated man or so could do very

little against them. But what could an isolated man do?”

“Well,” said Wotton rather impatiently. “What could he do?”

“As I say,” continued Mr. Pond calmly, “I sat down and had a good

think about what a spy or stray intruder might do, in a quiet way

without any noise of battle, murder or sudden death, if he did

manage somehow to spot the right box. So I got on to the private

telephone to headquarters; and told them to see that the postal and

transport authorities held up every one of the boxes or packages on

which the address seemed to have been altered; anything crossed out

or anything substituted. A man might conceivably snatch a moment

to re-direct a box to some of his friends in London; though he

could never take the box out of the station without being searched.

That’s what I did; and it was these broken-down penholders that

reminded me of it. It’s a pretty broken-down place to spend

Christmas in, as you say; they have given us a sort of a fire,

which is more than some waiting-rooms do; but it looks as if it

were dying of depression; and I don’t wonder.”

He stirred up the neglected fire, making quite a creditable blaze,

with his usual instinct for the comforts of life; then he added:

la porta, e l’impiegato di Sir Hubert entrò scivolando per riferire di aver assolto

l’incarico. Sir Hubert dapprima non lo vide, con lo sguardo corrucciato

fisso sulla mappa ferroviaria del percorso da seguire; e

Dyer in quel momento stava esaminando molto da vicino la bianca

scatola d’abete, già scelta e portata come campione.

Ma il signor Pond notò l’impiegato; e non poté fare a meno di pensare che

valeva davvero la pena di notarlo. Era un giovane di nome Franks, dai

capelli chiari accuratamente lisciati, e abbastanza aggraziato di corpo e

d’abito; ma il suo viso largo aveva quell’aria indescrivibile che

talora si scorge, di cui possiamo dire soltanto che ricorda la grossa

testa sul piccolo corpo di un nano, o forse quella incassata

tra le spalle di un gobbo; il volto non è normale, nemmeno

su un corpo normale. Ma le altre cause che arrestarono per un attimo

l’occhio del signor Pond furono, primo, il fatto che l’impiegato fosse

visibilmente a disagio nel porgere in silenzio le carte al suo

superiore; e, non ultimo, che avesse trasalito visibilmente quando

vide il detective di Scotland Yard.

Il secondo Consiglio, se così lo si può chiamare, si tenne in quello che tutti

concordavano essere il centro strategico dell’intera manovra: un certo

nodo ferroviario delle Midlands. Accadde che il

carico di scatole, insieme a sacchi postali e cose simili, dovesse

essere trasferito qui da un treno all’altro, che arrivava

poco dopo allo stesso binario. Era a questo punto che vi era

la maggior possibilità di un’interferenza dall’esterno; ed è

da temere che Dyer forzasse parecchio la mano nel suo riluttante

compromesso con la Costituzione britannica, in fatto di ordini

di polizia che fermavano, trattenevano o esaminavano chiunque tentasse

di entrare o uscire dalla stazione.

“Ho detto ai nostri uomini che non devono lasciar uscire nemmeno NOI dalla

stazione,” disse, “senza un attento esame, per paura che a qualcuno

venga la fantasia di travestirsi da signor Pond.”

“Ha un che di festoso, così vicino a Natale,” disse il signor Pond

lugubremente. “Deduco quindi che per ora dobbiamo restare in

stazione; e non si può certo dire che abbia un’aria particolarmente festosa.”

Nulla, in verità, può ben sembrare più desolato di uno dei

numerosi binari laterali di una stazione ferroviaria deserta in una tetra

giornata d’inverno; se non la vuota Sala d’Attesa di Terza Classe

allestita per essere un rifugio umano dalla folata d’inverno. In qualche modo

la sala d’attesa appare persino meno umana del binario da cui

essa è rifugio; adorna di pochi avvisi stampati che nessuno

potrebbe mai leggere, orari di treni o polverose piante di ferrovie,

fornita in un angolo di penne rotte con cui nessuno potrebbe

scrivere, e calamai secchi senza inchiostro per scrivere; con

un’unica macchia di colori spenti, la sbiadita réclame di una

compagnia di assicurazioni. Sembrava certo, alla mente distratta, un

luogo dimenticato da Dio in cui trascorrere una parte del Natale; ma il signor Pond aveva

una stoica allegria in tali circostanze, che alquanto

sorprendeva chi conosceva soltanto il suo felino amore per la comoda

routine domestica.

Entrò in quella stanza vuota e sgradevole con passo svelto,

fermandosi un attimo a fissare pensieroso l’inchiostro secco e

le penne rotte sul tavolino d’angolo.

“Beh,” disse, voltandosi, “con quelle non potevano combinar granché,

comunque sia; ma, certo, potevano avere matite o penne

stilografiche. Sono piuttosto contento di averlo fatto, tutto sommato.”

“Pond,” disse Wotton con gravità, “questo rientra comunque nelle vostre competenze;

e sono certo che Dyer converrà che abbiamo fatto bene a seguire

il vostro consiglio finora. Ma spero non vi dispiaccia che io nutra una lieve

curiosità su ciò che avete fatto.”

“Affatto,” rispose Pond. “Forse avrei dovuto dirvelo

prima. Molto probabilmente avrei dovuto farlo prima. Ma

subito dopo che aveste la bontà di lasciarmi fare a modo mio, quanto

all’inviarlo insieme a tutto il resto in scatole semplici e identiche,

mi sedetti e riflettei a fondo su quale sarebbe stata la miglior

precauzione successiva a quella. Sono quasi certo che se fosse

stato portato in un’auto speciale da uomini armati, quell’auto sarebbe stata

assaltata e quegli uomini armati magari rapinati con la forza delle armi;

comunque, c’era troppo rischio in ciò. C’è un’organizzazione

di gangster ben più elaborata già all’opera contro di noi di quanto

la maggior parte della gente immagini; e moltiplicare acquisti e

preparativi significa moltiplicare indizi e transazioni da seguire per le loro

spie. Ma non credo che le bande potrebbero entrare qui in alcun modo,

specie ora che la polizia presidia i cancelli di tutte queste

stazioni come fortezze. Un uomo isolato o giù di lì potrebbe fare ben

poco contro di loro. Ma cosa potrebbe fare un uomo isolato?”

“Beh,” disse Wotton alquanto spazientito. “Cosa potrebbe fare?”

“Come dicevo,” proseguì il signor Pond con calma, “mi sedetti e riflettei

per bene su cosa potrebbe fare una spia o un intruso di passaggio, senza clamore,

senza alcun fragore di battaglia, di assassinio o di morte improvvisa, se pur

riuscisse in qualche modo a individuare la scatola giusta. Così mi attaccai al

telefono privato del quartier generale; e dissi loro di badare che le autorità

postali e dei trasporti fermassero ogni scatola o pacco su

cui l’indirizzo sembrasse alterato; qualcosa cancellato

o qualcosa sostituito. Un uomo potrebbe concepibilmente cogliere un attimo

per re-indirizzare una scatola a qualcuno dei suoi amici a Londra; benché

non possa mai portar fuori la scatola dalla stazione senza esser perquisito.

Ecco cosa feci; e furono proprio questi portapenne sfasciati a

ricordarmelo. È un posto piuttosto sfasciato in cui passare

il Natale, come dite voi; ci hanno dato una specie di fuoco,

il che è più di quel che fanno certe sale d’attesa; ma pare quasi

morente di sconforto; e non me ne meraviglio.”

Attizzò il fuoco trascurato, ravvivando una fiammata più che decorosa,

col suo consueto istinto per le comodità della vita; poi aggiunse:

“I hope you don’t disagree with that second precaution of mine.”

“No; I think that also is a very sensible precaution; though I hope

there is no chance of anybody hitting on the right box, even by

accident.” Hubert Wotton frowned a moment at the renewed flame and

the dancing sparks, and then said gloomily, “This is about the time

when people at Christmas are going to the pantomime. Or, at any

rate, to the pictures.”

Mr. Pond nodded; he seemed to be suddenly smitten with a fit of

abstraction. At last he said:

“I sometimes wonder whether things weren’t better when pictures

meant the pictures in the fire, instead of the pictures on the

film.”

Sir Hubert Wotton gruffly suggested, in a general way, that the

dingy fire in a Third Class Waiting-Room was not one in which he

would prefer to look for pictures.

“The fire pictures, like the cloud pictures,” went on Mr. Pond,

“are just incomplete enough to call out the imagination to complete

them. Besides,” he added, cheerfully poking the fire, “you can

stick a poker into the coals and break them up into a different

picture; whereas, if you push a great pole through the screen

because you don’t like the face of a film-star, there is all sorts

of trouble.”

Dyer, who had stamped out on to the platform during this

imaginative interlude, returned at this moment with highly

practical news. By exploring many tunnels, and scouring many

platforms on that labyrinthine junction, he had found that there

really was a remote refreshment-room, in which it was possible to

have some sort of lunch; which had been a silent problem for all

three of the officials involved.

“I’ll stay on this platform,” he said; “in fact I shall stay on

this platform all night if necessary. This is my particular job.

But you go and get your lunch first and come back; and I’ll see if

I can get some afterwards. Never mind about the trains; I’ve

arranged for all that; and, anyhow, I shall be there when the only

possible moment of danger comes.”

In fact, his last words were almost drowned in the throb and racket

of the approach of the first train. They all saw the mailbags and

boxes and packages duly put out on the platform; and then Wotton, a

man of regular habits, who was beginning to feel rather peckish,

was easily persuaded by Dyer to accept his arrangement and go in

search of a bite of food. Wotton and Pond dispatched their rather

meagre lunch with reasonable rapidity; but even so had occasion to

quicken their footsteps as they came within sight of their own

original platform; since a train, which was apparently the second

train, was beginning to shift and puff out of the station; and when

they rejoined their companion, the platform was already bare.

“All safe,” said Dyer, with satisfaction. “I saw all the boxes and

things into the van myself; and nobody’s been here to interfere

with them. Our main trouble is really over; and I shouldn’t mind

having a little lunch myself.”

He grinned at them, rubbing his hands in a congratulatory manner;

and as he turned towards the subterranean passages, they turned

once more with the intention of returning to the hollow and smoky

cell of the waiting-room.

“It does seem as if there were nothing more for us to do here,”

said Wotton. “It rather increases the freezing futility of this

shack.”

“I consider it quite a Christmas triumph,” said Mr. Pond, with

undiminished cheerfulness, “that we have managed to keep the fire

in, anyhow… . Why, I believe it’s begun to snow.”

For some time they had noted that the afternoon, already darkening

towards the early winter evening, had something of that lurid

greenish light which often glows under the load of snow-clouds; a

sprinkling began to fall as they went along the apparently

interminable platform; and by the time they reached the austere

waiting-room, its roof and doorway were powdered with silver. The

fire was burning briskly inside; Dyer had evidently been keeping

himself warm.

“It’s devilish queer,” said Wotton, “but the whole thing is really

beginning to look like a Christmas card. Our dismal salle

d’attente will soon be a parody of Father Christmas’s cottage in a

pantomime.”

“The whole thing is like the parody of a pantomime,” said Pond in a

lower and more disquieted tone, “and as you say, it is very queer.”

After a pause, Wotton added abruptly:

“What is worrying you, Pond?”

“I’m wondering, if not worrying,” answered Pond, “about exactly

what a man WOULD do to intercept or misdirect that box, in a place

like this, with no pens or anything… . Of course, there’s not

much in that; he might have a fountain-pen or a pencil.”

“Oh, you’ve settled all that; you seem to be mad on pencils,” said

Wotton impatiently. “It comes of always blue-pencilling those

everlasting proofs of yours.”

“It wouldn’t be a blue pencil,” said Pond, shaking his head. “I

was thinking of something more like a red pencil; which would mark

very black indeed. But what bothers me is that there are always

more ways of doing anything than you’d fancy, even in a place like

this.”

“But you’ve blocked all that already,” insisted the other; “by

telephoning as you did.”

“Well,” said Pond obstinately, “and what would they do then; if

they knew I’d telephoned?”

Wotton looked puzzled; and Pond sat down in silence, stirring the

fire and staring at it.

After a silence he said abruptly: “I wish Dyer were back.”

“What do you want him now for?” asked his friend. “I should say

he’d earned a little late lunch. As far as I can see, he’s

finished the business; and it’s all over here.”

“I fear,” said Pond, without taking his head out of the fireplace,

“that it’s only just going to begin.”

There was another silence of growing mystification, like the

“Spero che non siate in disaccordo con questa mia seconda precauzione.”

“No; credo che anche quella sia una precauzione assai sensata; benché speri

che non ci sia alcuna possibilità che qualcuno azzecchi la scatola giusta, foss’anche per

caso.” Hubert Wotton corrugò un attimo la fronte alla fiamma ravvivata e

alle scintille danzanti, poi disse cupamente: “Questo è più o meno il momento

in cui, a Natale, la gente va alla pantomima. O, quantomeno,

al cinema.”

Il signor Pond annuì; parve còlto d’un tratto da un accesso di

astrazione. Alla fine disse:

“Talvolta mi domando se le cose non fossero migliori quando i quadri

erano i quadri nel fuoco, invece dei quadri sulla

pellicola.”

Sir Hubert Wotton suggerì burberamente, in modo generico, che il

fioco fuoco di una Sala d’Attesa di Terza Classe non era di quelli in cui

avrebbe preferito cercare quadri.

“I quadri del fuoco, come i quadri delle nuvole,” proseguì il signor Pond,

“sono incompleti quanto basta per chiamare l’immaginazione a completarli.

Del resto,” aggiunse, attizzando allegramente il fuoco, “puoi

ficcare un attizzatoio tra i carboni e romperli in un quadro

diverso; mentre, se cacci una gran pertica attraverso lo schermo

perché non ti piace la faccia di una diva del cinema, sono guai

d’ogni sorta.”

Dyer, che era uscito impettito sul binario durante questo

interludio fantasioso, tornò in quel momento con notizie assai

pratiche. Esplorando molte gallerie e battendo molti

binari di quel labirintico nodo, aveva scoperto che davvero

esisteva un remoto buffet, in cui era possibile

consumare una sorta di pranzo; il che era stato un tacito problema per tutti e

tre i funzionari coinvolti.

“Io resto su questo binario,” disse; “anzi, resterò su

questo binario tutta la notte se necessario. È il mio compito preciso.

Ma voi andate prima a pranzare e tornate; e vedrò se

poi riuscirò a mangiare qualcosa anch’io. Non curatevi dei treni; ho

sistemato tutto; e, comunque, sarò qui quando verrà l’unico

possibile momento di pericolo.”

In effetti, le sue ultime parole furono quasi coperte dal fremito e dal fragore

dell’arrivo del primo treno. Videro tutti i sacchi postali e

le scatole e i pacchi debitamente scaricati sul binario; e allora Wotton, uomo

di abitudini regolari, che cominciava a sentire un certo languorino,

fu facilmente persuaso da Dyer ad accettare la sua proposta e ad andare

in cerca di un boccone. Wotton e Pond sbrigarono il loro piuttosto

magro pranzo con ragionevole rapidità; ma ebbero comunque motivo di

affrettare il passo appena giunsero in vista del loro stesso

binario di partenza; poiché un treno, che era a quanto pareva il secondo

treno, cominciava a muoversi e a sbuffare fuori dalla stazione; e quando

raggiunsero il compagno, il binario era già spoglio.

“Tutto al sicuro,” disse Dyer, con soddisfazione. “Ho visto io stesso caricare

nel vagone tutte le scatole e le cose; e nessuno è venuto qui a interferire

con esse. Il grosso dei nostri guai è ormai passato; e non mi

dispiacerebbe pranzare un po’ anch’io.”

Sorrise loro, fregandosi le mani in aria di congratulazione;

e mentre si volgeva verso i passaggi sotterranei, essi si volsero

di nuovo con l’intenzione di rientrare nella cava e fumosa

cella della sala d’attesa.

“Sembra proprio che non ci sia più nulla da fare qui,”

disse Wotton. “Il che accresce piuttosto la gelida futilità di questo

baraccone.”

“Lo considero un vero trionfo natalizio,” disse il signor Pond, con

immutata allegria, “l’esser riusciti a tener acceso il fuoco,

nonostante tutto… . Ma guarda, credo abbia cominciato a nevicare.”

Da un po’ di tempo avevano notato che il pomeriggio, già oscurandosi

verso la precoce sera d’inverno, aveva qualcosa di quella livida

luce verdastra che spesso avvampa sotto il carico delle nubi di neve; un

nevischio cominciò a cadere mentre percorrevano il binario apparentemente

interminabile; e nel tempo in cui raggiunsero l’austera

sala d’attesa, il tetto e la soglia erano spolverati d’argento. Il

fuoco ardeva vivace all’interno; Dyer aveva evidentemente tenuto

sé stesso al caldo.

“È diabolicamente strano,” disse Wotton, “ma tutto quanto comincia davvero

ad assomigliare a una cartolina di Natale. La nostra tetra salle

d’attente sarà presto una parodia della casetta di Babbo Natale in una

pantomima.”

“L’intera faccenda è come la parodia di una pantomima,” disse Pond in tono

più basso e più turbato, “e, come dite voi, è molto strana.”

Dopo una pausa, Wotton aggiunse bruscamente:

“Cosa vi preoccupa, Pond?”

“Mi interrogo, più che preoccuparmi,” rispose Pond, “su esattamente

cosa FAREBBE un uomo per intercettare o dirottare quella scatola, in un luogo

come questo, senza penne né nulla… . Certo, non c’è

granché in ciò; potrebbe avere una stilografica o una matita.”

“Oh, avete già risolto tutto ciò; sembrate fissato con le matite,” disse

Wotton spazientito. “Viene dal blu-matitare in eterno quelle

vostre bozze senza fine.”

“Non sarebbe una matita blu,” disse Pond, scuotendo il capo. “Pensavo

a qualcosa di più simile a una matita rossa; che segnerebbe

molto nero, in verità. Ma ciò che mi turba è che c’è sempre

più modi di fare qualsiasi cosa di quanti se ne immaginino, persino in un luogo come

questo.”

“Ma avete già bloccato tutto ciò,” insistette l’altro; “con quella

telefonata che avete fatto.”

“Beh,” disse Pond ostinato, “e cosa farebbero allora; se

sapessero che ho telefonato?”

Wotton parve perplesso; e Pond sedette in silenzio, attizzando il

fuoco e fissandolo.

Dopo un silenzio disse bruscamente: “Vorrei che Dyer fosse tornato.”

“A cosa vi serve adesso?” chiese l’amico. “Direi

che si è guadagnato un pranzo tardivo. Per quanto vedo, ha

concluso l’affare; e qui è tutto finito.”

“Temo,” disse Pond, senza togliere il capo dal camino,

“che stia solo per cominciare.”

Vi fu un altro silenzio di crescente smarrimento, come il

gathering darkness outside. And then Pond observed suddenly:

“I suppose we’ve come back to the right platform.”

Wotton’s face only expressed the stolid stupefaction natural under

the circumstances; but in his depths, which were deeper than some

supposed, an unearthly chill touched him for the first time.

Nightmare stirred in its sleep; not the mere practical perplexity

of a problem, but all those doubts beyond reason which revolve

round place and time. Before he could speak, Pond added:

“This is a different shaped poker.”

“What the devil do you mean?” exploded Wotton at last. “They have

locked up the station; and there is nobody on it but ourselves;

except that girl in the bar. You don’t imagine she has put a new

set of furniture and fire-irons in all the waiting-rooms?”

“No,” said Mr. Pond. “I didn’t say a new poker. I said a new

shape of poker.”

Almost as he spoke, he leapt away from the fireplace, leaving the

poker in the fire, and ran to the doorway, craning out his head and

listening. His companion listened also; and recognized as an

objective reality, which was no nightmare, a noise of scrambling

footsteps somewhere on the platform. But, when they ran out, the

platform appeared to be perfectly empty, now a blank and solid

table of snow; and they began to realize that the noise came from

underneath their feet. Looking over the railing, they saw that the

whole raised woodwork of the station was intercepted at one point

by a belt of grassy embankment, very grey and discoloured with the

smoke; they were just in time to see a dark lean figure scramble up

this bank and dive under the platform, in such a manner that he was

able the next moment to crawl out on the line. Then he calmly

mounted the platform, and stood there like a passenger waiting for

a train.

Apart from the fact that the stranger had practically burgled the

station, against such very special difficulties, Wotton’s mind,

already full of suspicions, decided at a glance that he was very

much of a dark horse. Curiously enough, he looked a little like a

horse, having a long equine visage and a strange sort of stoop; he

was swarthy and haggard and his hollow eyes were such dense patches

of shadow that it was a sort of shock to realize that the eyes

within were glaring. He was dressed with the last extreme of

shabbiness, in a long threadbare and almost ragged waterproof; and

they thought they had never seen before a face and figure so

symbolic of desolation and dreary tragedy. It seemed to Wotton

that he himself had his first real glimpse of those depths in which

despair manufactures the many revolutionary movements which it had

been his duty to combat; but, of necessity, his duty prevailed.

He stepped up to the man, asking him who and what he was, and why

he had thus evaded the police blockade. The man appeared to ignore

the other questions for the moment; but in answer to the question

about what he was, his tragic lantern-jaw moved and emitted a very

unexpected reply.

“I am a Clown,” he said in a depressed voice.

At this answer Mr. Pond seemed to start with altogether a new sort

of surprise. He had ruminated on the puzzles hitherto, like one

pursuing the study of things which some might find surprising, but

at which he himself was no longer very much surprised. But he

gaped helplessly at this as a man does at a miracle; or still more,

in a case like this, at a coincidence. Then another and yet more

undignified change came over him. It can only be said that, having

begun by goggling, he ended by giggling.

“Oh, Lord, this is an extra!” he exclaimed, and seemed once more

broken up by almost senile laughter. “This has nothing to do with

the story; but it is a marvellous addition to the pantomime. I

always noticed that the chief features in the pantomime had nothing

to do with the story.”

But Sir Hubert Wotton was having no more for the moment of Mr.

Pond’s fanciful mysteries; least of all, of the last and most

mysterious, the mystery of his mirth. He had already begun to

cross-examine the stranger in the style of the police; and the

stranger stood up to him with gloomy but unshaken lucidity. His

name, by his own account, was Hankin, and he was a public

entertainer who also gave private entertainments; who was, indeed,

only too glad to give any entertainments, in the depressed

condition of his state of livelihood. He had an engagement to

perform as clown at a children’s party that evening, and had

insisted on the necessity of catching a particular train; nor had

he been cheered by the assurance of the police at the entrance that

regular trains for passengers would be running again in an hour, at

a time that would make him too late for his appointment; and lose

him the first few shillings he had earned in many months. He had

done what many such people would probably have been glad to do, if

they had had the activity and audacity, and had climbed into the

station by an unguarded loophole. This statement was made with

firmness and simplicity, and Pond evidently believed it; but Wotton

was still smouldering with some suspicions.

“I must ask you to come with us to the waiting-room,” he said.

“Have you anything about you to confirm your story?”

“I haven’t got my visiting-card,” said the sombre Mr. Hankin. “I

lost it along with my Rolls-Royce and my little castle in Scotland.

But you can see me in my resplendent and fashionable evening-dress,

if you like. I think that ought to convince you.”

The man was carrying a shabby and misshapen bag, which he lugged

along to the waiting-room; and there, before the staring eyes of

Wotton, he stripped off his waterproof and appeared in a sort of

white circus dress, but for retaining his shabby boots and

trousers. Then he dived into the bag and brought out a monstrous

buio che si addensava fuori. E allora Pond osservò all’improvviso:

“Immagino che siamo tornati al binario giusto.”

Il volto di Wotton esprimeva solo lo stolido sbigottimento naturale date le

circostanze; ma nei suoi abissi, più profondi di quanto alcuni

supponessero, un brivido ultraterreno lo sfiorò per la prima volta.

L’Incubo si agitò nel suo sonno; non la mera perplessità pratica

di un problema, ma tutti quei dubbi al di là della ragione che ruotano

intorno al luogo e al tempo. Prima che potesse parlare, Pond aggiunse:

“Questo attizzatoio ha una forma diversa.”

“Che diavolo intendete?” esplose alla fine Wotton. “Hanno

chiuso a chiave la stazione; e non c’è nessuno tranne noi;

salvo quella ragazza al bancone. Non immaginerete mica che abbia messo un nuovo

corredo di mobili e di ferri da camino in tutte le sale d’attesa?”

“No,” disse il signor Pond. “Non ho detto un nuovo attizzatoio. Ho detto una nuova

forma di attizzatoio.”

Quasi mentre parlava, balzò via dal camino, lasciando l’

attizzatoio nel fuoco, e corse alla soglia, allungando il capo e

tendendo l’orecchio. Anche il compagno tese l’orecchio; e riconobbe, come una

realtà oggettiva, che non era alcun nightmare, un rumore di passi

trascinati da qualche parte sul binario. Ma, quando corsero fuori, il

binario appariva perfettamente vuoto, ormai una piana e compatta

lastra di neve; e cominciarono a rendersi conto che il rumore veniva da

sotto i loro piedi. Guardando oltre la ringhiera, videro che l’

intera armatura sopraelevata della stazione era interrotta in un punto

da una fascia d’argine erboso, assai grigio e sporcato dal

fumo; giunsero appena in tempo a vedere una scura e magra figura arrampicarsi su

quell’argine e tuffarsi sotto il binario, in modo tale da poter

l’attimo dopo strisciare fuori sui binari. Poi montò con calma

sulla banchina, e vi rimase come un passeggero in attesa di

un treno.

A parte il fatto che lo sconosciuto aveva praticamente scassinato la

stazione, contro difficoltà tanto particolari, la mente di Wotton,

già piena di sospetti, decise a colpo d’occhio che era proprio un

cavallo su cui puntare al buio. Curiosamente, somigliava un po’ a un

cavallo, avendo un lungo muso equino e una strana specie di curvatura; era

fosco e smunto e i suoi occhi infossati erano macchie d’ombra

tanto dense che era una sorta di sussulto rendersi conto che gli occhi

lì dentro fiammeggiavano. Era vestito col più estremo grado di

miseria, in un lungo impermeabile logoro e quasi cencioso; e

pensarono di non aver mai visto prima un volto e una figura tanto

simbolici di desolazione e di tetra tragedia. Parve a Wotton

di avere lui stesso il suo primo vero scorcio di quegli abissi in cui

la disperazione fabbrica i molti moti rivoluzionari che era

stato suo dovere combattere; ma, per forza di cose, il dovere prevalse.

Si avvicinò all’uomo, chiedendogli chi e cosa fosse, e perché

avesse così eluso il blocco della polizia. L’uomo parve ignorare

le altre domande per il momento; ma in risposta alla domanda

su cosa fosse, la sua tragica mascella prominente si mosse ed emise una

risposta assai inattesa.

“Sono un Pagliaccio,” disse con voce depressa.

A questa risposta il signor Pond parve trasalire con tutt’altra specie

di sorpresa. Aveva rimuginato sugli enigmi fin lì, come chi

persegue lo studio di cose che alcuni potrebbero trovare sorprendenti, ma

di cui egli stesso non si sorprendeva più molto. Ma

restò a bocca aperta di fronte a questo come un uomo davanti a un miracolo; o ancor più,

in un caso come questo, davanti a una coincidenza. Poi un altro e ancor più

indecoroso mutamento lo colse. Si può solo dire che, avendo

cominciato a strabuzzare gli occhi, finì per sghignazzare.

“Oh, Signore, questo è un fuori programma!” esclamò, e parve di nuovo

squassato da un riso quasi senile. “Questo non c’entra nulla con

la storia; ma è una meravigliosa aggiunta alla pantomima. Ho

sempre notato che le parti principali della pantomima non c’entravano nulla

con la storia.”

Ma Sir Hubert Wotton non ne voleva più sapere per il momento dei

fantasiosi misteri del signor Pond; men che meno dell’ultimo e più

misterioso, il mistero della sua ilarità. Aveva già cominciato a

interrogare lo sconosciuto alla maniera della polizia; e lo

sconosciuto gli tenne testa con cupa ma incrollabile lucidità. Il suo

nome, a suo dire, era Hankin, ed era un pubblico

intrattenitore che dava anche intrattenimenti privati; anzi, era

fin troppo lieto di dare qualsiasi intrattenimento, nella depressa

condizione del suo stato di sussistenza. Aveva un ingaggio per

esibirsi come pagliaccio a una festa di bambini quella sera, e aveva

insistito sulla necessità di prendere un treno preciso; né

era stato rincuorato dalla rassicurazione della polizia all’ingresso che

i treni regolari per i passeggeri sarebbero ripartiti entro un’ora, a un

orario che l’avrebbe fatto arrivare troppo tardi all’appuntamento; e gli avrebbe fatto perdere

i primi pochi scellini che avesse guadagnato in molti mesi. Aveva

fatto ciò che molte persone simili sarebbero state probabilmente liete di fare, se

ne avessero avuto la prontezza e l’audacia, ed era salito nella

stazione da un varco incustodito. Questa dichiarazione fu fatta con

fermezza e semplicità, e Pond evidentemente vi credette; ma Wotton

covava ancora qualche sospetto.

“Devo pregarvi di venire con noi nella sala d’attesa,” disse.

“Avete qualcosa con voi che confermi la vostra storia?”

“Non ho il mio biglietto da visita,” disse il tetro signor Hankin. “L’ho

perso insieme alla mia Rolls-Royce e al mio piccolo castello in Scozia.

Ma potete vedermi nel mio splendido e alla moda abito da sera,

se volete. Credo che dovrebbe convincervi.”

L’uomo portava una borsa logora e sformata, che trascinò

fino alla sala d’attesa; e lì, sotto gli occhi sbarrati di

Wotton, si sfilò l’impermeabile e comparve in una sorta di

bianco costume da circo, salvo conservare i logori stivali e

i calzoni. Poi si tuffò nella borsa e ne trasse una mostruosa

grinning and glaring white mask, picked out with red ornaments, and

fitted it on his head. And there, solid and seemingly incredible

before their eyes, was the genuine clown of the old-fashioned

pantomime, such as they had been discussing.

“He came up through a trapdoor, I suppose we must say,” murmured

the awestruck Mr. Pond. “But I feel as if he had fallen out of the

sky like the snow. Fate or the fairies have added this final

touch; see how they built up gradually round us the whole palace of

pantomime in this wilderness; first the firelight and then the snow

and now the only original ‘Here We Are Again!’ Such a cosy happy

Christmas! Screams of joy from all the tiny tots… . Oh, my

God, how ghastly it all is!”

His friend looked at him and received a second shock in realizing

that the bearded face, though it still wore the elfish look of its

first amusement at the accident, was in fact terribly pale.

“And the ghastliest part of it,” said Mr. Pond, “is that I am going

to complete your costume, Sir.”

He suddenly plucked out the poker, from where it was standing in

the fire, and it emerged already red-hot. He handed it politely to

the Clown.

“I may look like a pantaloon,” he said, “but this will obviously be

more suitable to the Clown. This is the red-hot poker, with which

you make the Policeman jump.”

Wotton stared at a scene to which he had now entirely lost the

clue; and in the silence that followed, the long platform outside

resounded with a firm and heavy stride coming nearer and nearer.

The large figure of Dyer the detective appeared framed in the

doorway; and he stood as if turned to stone by what he saw.

Wotton was not astonished at his astonishment. He presumed that it

was an astonishment like his own, at the irrelevant intrusion of

the pantomime figure. But Pond was watching more closely; and for

Pond that moment was the confirmation of the creeping suspicion

that had worked its way into his mind for the last hour or so.

Nobody could have been surprised at Dyer staring at the Clown. But

Dyer was not staring at the Clown. Nor was Dyer merely astonished;

perhaps the most astonishing thing was that he was not exactly

astonished. He was staring only at the poker; and he obviously saw

nothing funny about it. His face was distorted by almost demoniac

fear and fury; and he looked at the red pantomime poker rather as

if it had been the flaming sword of an accusing angel.

“Yes, it’s the red-hot poker,” said Pond, in a low and almost

forced voice, “and it does make the policeman jump.”

The policeman jumped; he jumped back three paces, and as he leapt

he loosened a big official revolver and fired at Mr. Pond again and

again; the shocks of explosion shaking the thin shanty in which

they stood. The first shot buried itself in the wall about an inch

from Mr. Pond’s dome-like forehead; the other four went rather

wild; for Wotton and the stranger had woken up to the situation and

were struggling with the would-be assassin, and forcing his hand

away. Finally, he managed to wrench his hand loose again and twist

the pistol inwards upon himself; the body of the big man stiffened

in their arms; and Dyer of the detective service lay dead on the

floor before the dancing fire.

The explanation of events was given by Mr. Pond some time later;

for his first action after the catastrophe left no time for

explanations. He had repeatedly, at intervals, looked at the clock

in the waiting-room, and seemed satisfied; but he was leaving

nothing to chance. He darted out of the door, raced down the

platform, and found his way to the telephone-box he had used

earlier in the day. He came out wiping his brow, in spite of the

cold; but wearing a smile of relative relief in the midst of the

tragedy. When asked what he was doing, he answered simply: “I was

telephoning a description of the package. It’ll be all right now;

they will hold it up.”

“Do you mean THE package?” asked Wotton. “I thought that was just

like all the rest.”

“I’ll tell you all about it presently,” replied Pond. “Let us go

and take a polite farewell of the public entertainer, who has given

us such a delightful entertainment. I really think we ought to

give him a fiver or so in compensation.”

Wotton was very much the gentleman, in the more generous sense, and

he heartily agreed to this; and, though it was difficult for the

melancholy man with the horse-face to produce anything nearer to a

laugh than a neigh, he was manifestly much cheered internally and

his gaunt face was cracked with a crooked smile. Then, by way of

finishing their Christmas feast on this curious scene of festivity,

the two friends adjourned to the one and only refreshment-room and

sat down behind two tall glasses of beer; having no taste for

warming their hands at that rather too blood-red fire that still

burned in the sinister waiting-room.

“It was curious you were able to corner Dyer like that,” said

Wotton. “I never had a thought of him.”

“I never had a thought of him either,” said Pond, “and he cornered

himself, just as he killed himself. I fancy many conspirators are

really chasing themselves into corners like that. Don’t you see

that he locked himself into a logical prison, when he would empty

and close the whole station, to impress us with his efficiency. By

the way, I ought to have guessed there was a double meaning in his

dictatorial ways and demands to override the Constitution; he was

talking exactly as our enemies and their foreign friends talk. But

the point is this. I wasn’t thinking about him particularly; I

never thought of him at all until I found him wandering about

inside the logical square or enclosure, like a rectangle in

maschera bianca sogghignante e sfavillante, ornata di fregi rossi, e

se la calzò sul capo. Ed ecco, solido e in apparenza incredibile

davanti ai loro occhi, il genuino pagliaccio della vecchia

pantomima, proprio come quella di cui avevano discusso.

“Immagino dovremo dire che è salito da una botola,” mormorò

il signor Pond attonito. “Ma mi sento come se fosse caduto dal

cielo come la neve. Il Fato o le fate hanno aggiunto quest’ultimo

tocco; guardate come ci hanno eretto attorno a poco a poco l’intero palazzo della

pantomima in questo deserto; prima la luce del fuoco e poi la neve

e ora l’unico e originale ‘Eccoci di nuovo qua!’ Che accogliente e felice

Natale! Strilli di gioia da tutti i marmocchi… . Oh, Dio

mio, com’è tutto spettrale!”

L’amico lo guardò e ricevette un secondo colpo nel rendersi conto

che il volto barbuto, benché portasse ancora l’aria da folletto del suo

primo divertimento all’incidente, era in realtà terribilmente pallido.

“E la parte più spettrale,” disse il signor Pond, “è che sto per

completare il vostro costume, Signore.”

D’un tratto estrasse l’attizzatoio, da dove stava ritto nel

fuoco, e ne uscì già rovente. Lo porse cortesemente al

Pagliaccio.

“Io somiglierò a un pantalone,” disse, “ma questo si addirà evidentemente

di più al Pagliaccio. È l’attizzatoio rovente, con cui

fate saltare il Poliziotto.”

Wotton fissava una scena di cui aveva ormai del tutto perduto il

filo; e nel silenzio che seguì, il lungo binario là fuori

risuonò di un passo fermo e pesante che si avvicinava sempre più.

La grande figura di Dyer il detective comparve incorniciata nella

soglia; ed egli si fermò come impietrito da ciò che vedeva.

Wotton non si stupì del suo stupore. Presumeva che fosse

uno stupore come il proprio, per l’irrilevante intrusione della

figura di pantomima. Ma Pond osservava più da vicino; e per

Pond quel momento fu la conferma dello strisciante sospetto

che si era fatto strada nella sua mente nell’ultima ora circa.

Nessuno si sarebbe stupito che Dyer fissasse il Pagliaccio. Ma

Dyer non fissava il Pagliaccio. Né Dyer era semplicemente stupito;

forse la cosa più stupefacente era che non fosse esattamente

stupito. Fissava soltanto l’attizzatoio; ed evidentemente non ci

vedeva nulla di comico. Il volto gli era stravolto da una paura e

da una furia quasi demoniache; e guardava il rosso attizzatoio da pantomima come

se fosse stata la fiammeggiante spada di un angelo accusatore.

“Sì, è l’attizzatoio rovente,” disse Pond, con voce bassa e quasi

forzata, “e fa davvero saltare il poliziotto.”

Il poliziotto saltò; saltò indietro di tre passi, e mentre balzava

sguainò una grossa rivoltella d’ordinanza e sparò al signor Pond più e

più volte; le scosse delle esplosioni scuotevano la fragile baracca in cui

stavano. Il primo colpo si conficcò nel muro a un pollice

circa dalla fronte a cupola del signor Pond; gli altri quattro andarono piuttosto

a vuoto; poiché Wotton e lo sconosciuto si erano destati alla situazione ed

erano alle prese con l’aspirante assassino, e gli forzavano la mano

lontano. Alla fine, egli riuscì a liberare di nuovo la mano con uno strattone e a torcere la

pistola verso di sé; il corpo del grosso uomo s’irrigidì

fra le loro braccia; e Dyer del servizio investigativo giacque morto sul

pavimento davanti al fuoco danzante.

La spiegazione degli eventi fu data dal signor Pond qualche tempo dopo;

poiché la sua prima azione dopo la catastrofe non lasciò tempo per

spiegazioni. Aveva ripetutamente, a intervalli, guardato l’orologio

nella sala d’attesa, e pareva soddisfatto; ma non lasciava

nulla al caso. Schizzò fuori dalla porta, corse lungo il

binario, e trovò la via fino alla cabina telefonica che aveva usato

prima quel giorno. Ne uscì tergendosi la fronte, malgrado il

freddo; ma con un sorriso di relativo sollievo in mezzo alla

tragedia. Quando gli chiesero cosa facesse, rispose semplicemente: “Stavo

telefonando una descrizione del pacco. Ora andrà tutto bene;

lo fermeranno.”

“Intendete IL pacco?” chiese Wotton. “Credevo fosse proprio

come tutti gli altri.”

“Vi racconterò tutto tra poco,” rispose Pond. “Andiamo

a prendere un cortese congedo dal pubblico intrattenitore, che ci ha

offerto un intrattenimento tanto delizioso. Credo davvero che dovremmo

dargli un cinque sterline o giù di lì come compenso.”

Wotton era molto un gentiluomo, nel senso più generoso, e

acconsentì di cuore a questo; e, benché fosse difficile per l’

uomo malinconico dalla faccia di cavallo produrre qualcosa di più simile a un

riso che a un nitrito, era manifestamente assai rincuorato dentro e

il suo volto scarno era spaccato da un sorriso storto. Poi, per

concludere il loro banchetto natalizio in quella curiosa scena di festa,

i due amici si trasferirono nell’unico e solo buffet e

sedettero dietro due alti bicchieri di birra; non avendo alcuna voglia di

scaldarsi le mani a quel fuoco fin troppo rosso sangue che ancora

ardeva nella sinistra sala d’attesa.

“È stato curioso che siate riuscito a mettere Dyer così alle strette,” disse

Wotton. “Non mi era mai passato per la mente.”

“Nemmeno a me era passato per la mente,” disse Pond, “ed è lui che si è messo

alle strette da solo, proprio come si è ucciso da solo. Credo che molti cospiratori

si caccino davvero in angoli così da soli. Non capite

che si è rinchiuso in una prigione logica, quando volle svuotare

e chiudere l’intera stazione, per impressionarci con la sua efficienza. A

proposito, avrei dovuto intuire che c’era un doppio senso nei suoi

modi dittatoriali e nelle sue pretese di scavalcare la Costituzione; parlava

esattamente come parlano i nostri nemici e i loro amici stranieri. Ma

il punto è questo. Non pensavo a lui in particolare; non

pensai affatto a lui finché non lo trovai aggirarsi

dentro il quadrato o il recinto logico, come un rettangolo in

geometry. I was thinking all the time about one thing: what would

these people probably do to divert or intercept the box, now that

they could hardly do it by direct attack or anything that made a

noise? I was more and more convinced they would try to redirect it

somehow, so that its going normally through the post would serve

them and not us. So I warned the authorities to stop all altered

addresses on suspicion; and I said to myself: What will the enemy

do now? What can he do, shut up in this enormous shed, bare of all

conveniences and appliances? But don’t you see that with that very

thought came the overpowering suspicion of who the enemy was?

“Nobody was there but you and Dyer when I said I had ‘phoned to

stop all altered addresses. I know in a mystery story I should

have to allow for the station being thronged with silent

eavesdroppers, a spy up the chimney and another crawling out of the

luggage; but in practical life it doesn’t happen. We heard the one

and only intruder, when he began to scramble up from the street.

The man who did hear it was Dyer; and notice that he almost

immediately wandered away up the platform, professing to find our

luncheon place for us; but really striding up and down and brooding

upon what the devil he should do next, for I am sure his original

plan had been to alter the address as I suggested. Was there

anything else in that bare beastly place he could use for the same

purpose, or another similar purpose? There was. But I never

guessed what it was, until I came back to the waiting-room and

happened to look at the poker. I saw it was twisted at a slightly

different angle; that could only mean it had been red-hot and

hammered half crooked like a horseshoe on the anvil. And then, of

course, I realized that a red-hot poker would serve as well as a

pen or pencil, or rather better, for altering an inscription on a

wooden box. A pen could only cross it out; but a poker could burn

it out. Managed neatly, it might well remove all trace of there

ever having been any label or previous inscription at all. But it

would do a great deal more than that. The clown is not the only

artist who wields a poker; there is the whole elegant craft called

poker-work. It would be quite easy to change the whole appearance

of a white deal box, so that it would no longer be classed with the

other boxes; running a black border round it, covering it with a

pattern, perhaps blackening it almost entirely. Then in one blank

space left he would brand the address he wanted it to reach, very

plain in black block letters, avoiding incidentally all the dangers

of being traced by handwriting. The thing would have gone through

the post to that address as a separate thing in an ordinary way;

and our scheme for posting it in an ordinary way would have

recoiled on our heads. As it was, I was just in time to describe

the poker-work box and stop it. I made a silly joke about a red

pencil marking black; but even then I had barely begun to suspect

Dyer; I’m ashamed to say the only person I began by suspecting was

your unfortunate clerk Franks, who is rather exceptionally

innocent.”

“Franks!” exclaimed Wotton. “Why on earth did you suspect him?”

“Because I was an ass,” said Pond, “and much more like a Pantaloon

than you may imagine. He’s a queer-looking fellow; but I ought

to have known that suffering sort of look is more often

conscientiousness than unconscientiousness. But where I was a

priceless ass was when I looked at the suspect instead of looking

at the detective. At that moment, Dyer was holding the box up,

looking at it very closely; and Franks, from the other side, could

see that he made a minute mark on it, very unobtrusively; so that

he would know it again. Franks knew about the box scheme; and

seeing that very swift and furtive act, he started and stared; and

I don’t wonder. In fact, Franks was the real detective and was far

ahead of me, for I hadn’t suspected Dyer at all. Not till, so to

speak, I actually found him like a burglar on the premises. I

might say on the logical premises.” He coughed slightly. “Pray

excuse the pun.”

“Well,” said Captain Gahagan, when Wotton had told him the story

long afterwards. “My favourite character in your drama is the

Clown. He is so irrelevant. I am like that myself. I am so

irrelevant.”

“You are,” said Sir Hubert Wotton, and resumed the study of his

documents.

“He is like the Clown in Shakespeare,” went on Gahagan with

unchanged buoyancy. “The Clown in Shakespeare seems to be there by

accident unconnected with the story and yet he is the chorus of the

tragedy. The Fool is like a fantastic dancing flame lighting up

the features and furniture of the dark house of death. Perhaps we

may connect Pond and Polonius after all.” And he continued to

illustrate his theory of the buffoons in Shakespeare, a dramatic

poet to whom he was fervently devoted, quoting large portions of

the plays in question in the old oratorical Irish fashion, to the

no small aid and acceleration of the business of the department,

busy at the moment with oppressing and delicate problems about

American claims concerning the commerce of Vancouver.

THE UNMENTIONABLE MAN

Mr. Pond was eating oysters—a serious and improving sight. His

friend Wotton did not care for oysters; saying he could not see the

sense of swallowing something you could hardly taste. He often

said he could not see the sense of things; and was deaf to the

wistful questions of his friend Gahagan, about whether he might

perhaps see the nonsense. There was no nonsense about Sir Hubert

Wotton; and there was a great deal of nonsense about Captain

Gahagan. Gahagan enjoyed oysters, yet one could not say he cared

geometria. Pensavo per tutto il tempo a una cosa sola: cosa avrebbero

probabilmente fatto costoro per dirottare o intercettare la scatola, ora che

potevano difficilmente farlo con un attacco diretto o con qualcosa che facesse

rumore? Ero sempre più convinto che avrebbero tentato di re-indirizzarla

in qualche modo, così che il suo normale transito per posta servisse

loro e non a noi. Perciò avvertii le autorità di fermare per sospetto tutti gli

indirizzi alterati; e mi dissi: cosa farà ora il nemico?

Cosa può fare, rinchiuso in questo enorme capannone, spoglio di ogni

comodità e attrezzatura? Ma non capite che proprio con quel

pensiero venne il travolgente sospetto di chi fosse il nemico?

“Non c’era nessuno tranne voi e Dyer quando dissi di aver telefonato per

fermare tutti gli indirizzi alterati. So che in un romanzo giallo dovrei

tener conto della stazione affollata di silenziosi

origliatori, una spia su per il camino e un’altra che striscia fuori dal

bagaglio; ma nella vita pratica ciò non accade. Sentimmo l’unico

e solo intruso, quando cominciò ad arrampicarsi dalla strada.

L’uomo che lo udì fu Dyer; e notate che quasi

subito si allontanò su per il binario, dichiarando di volerci trovare il

posto per il pranzo; ma in realtà camminando su e giù a grandi passi e rimuginando

su cosa diavolo dovesse fare dopo, poiché sono certo che il suo piano

originario era di alterare l’indirizzo come avevo suggerito io. C’era

qualcos’altro in quel luogo spoglio e ripugnante che potesse usare per lo stesso

scopo, o per un altro scopo simile? C’era. Ma non indovinai mai

cosa fosse, finché non tornai nella sala d’attesa e mi capitò

di guardare l’attizzatoio. Vidi che era piegato a un angolo lievemente

diverso; il che poteva significare soltanto che era stato reso rovente e

martellato mezzo storto come un ferro di cavallo sull’incudine. E allora, s’intende,

mi resi conto che un attizzatoio rovente sarebbe servito tanto bene quanto una

penna o una matita, anzi meglio, per alterare un’iscrizione su una

scatola di legno. Una penna poteva solo cancellarla; ma un attizzatoio poteva

bruciarla via. Manovrato con destrezza, poteva ben rimuovere ogni traccia che vi

fosse mai stata alcuna etichetta o alcuna precedente iscrizione. Ma

avrebbe fatto ben più di questo. Il pagliaccio non è l’unico

artista che maneggia un attizzatoio; c’è tutto l’elegante mestiere detto

pirografia. Sarebbe stato facilissimo mutare l’intero aspetto

di una bianca scatola d’abete, così che non fosse più classificata con le

altre scatole; tracciandovi attorno un bordo nero, coprendola

con un motivo, magari annerendola quasi del tutto. Poi, in un unico spazio

vuoto lasciato, avrebbe impresso a fuoco l’indirizzo che voleva le facesse raggiungere, assai

netto in nere lettere maiuscole, evitando per giunta tutti i pericoli

di esser rintracciato dalla calligrafia. La cosa sarebbe passata per

la posta fino a quell’indirizzo come oggetto a sé stante, nel modo consueto;

e il nostro piano di spedirla nel modo consueto ci

sarebbe ricaduto addosso. Così com’è, giunsi appena in tempo a descrivere

la scatola pirografata e a fermarla. Feci una sciocca battuta su una matita

rossa che segna nero; ma persino allora avevo appena cominciato a sospettare

Dyer; mi vergogno a dire che l’unica persona che cominciai col sospettare fu

il vostro sventurato impiegato Franks, che è invece eccezionalmente

innocente.”

“Franks!” esclamò Wotton. “Perché diavolo lo sospettavate?”

“Perché ero un asino,” disse Pond, “e assai più simile a un Pantalone

di quanto immaginiate. È un tipo dall’aria strana; ma avrei

dovuto sapere che quella specie di aria sofferente è più spesso

scrupolosità che mancanza di scrupolo. Ma dove fui un asino

impagabile fu quando guardai il sospettato invece di guardare

il detective. In quel momento, Dyer teneva alzata la scatola,

esaminandola molto da vicino; e Franks, dall’altro lato, poteva

vedere che vi faceva un minuscolo segno, con gran discrezione; così da

poterla riconoscere di nuovo. Franks sapeva del piano delle scatole; e

vedendo quell’atto tanto rapido e furtivo, trasalì e restò a fissare; e

non me ne meraviglio. In effetti, Franks era il vero detective ed era assai

più avanti di me, perché io non avevo sospettato affatto di Dyer. Non finché, per così

dire, non lo trovai come un ladro sul luogo del delitto. Potrei

dire sul luogo logico.” Tossì lievemente. “Vi

prego di scusare il gioco di parole.”

“Beh,” disse il Capitano Gahagan, quando Wotton gli ebbe raccontato la storia

molto tempo dopo. “Il mio personaggio preferito nel vostro dramma è il

Pagliaccio. È così irrilevante. Io sono così anch’io. Sono così

irrilevante.”

“Lo siete,” disse Sir Hubert Wotton, e riprese lo studio delle sue

carte.

“È come il Buffone in Shakespeare,” proseguì Gahagan con

immutato brio. “Il Buffone in Shakespeare pare esser lì per

caso, senza connessione con la storia, eppure è il coro della

tragedia. Il Matto è come una fantastica fiamma danzante che illumina

i tratti e le suppellettili della buia casa della Morte. Forse

possiamo collegare Pond e Polonio, dopotutto.” E continuò a

illustrare la sua teoria dei buffoni in Shakespeare, poeta drammatico

a cui era ferventemente devoto, citando ampie porzioni

delle opere in questione nell’antica maniera oratoria irlandese, con

non poco aiuto e accelerazione per gli affari del dicastero,

alle prese in quel momento con problemi opprimenti e delicati sulle

rivendicazioni americane riguardo al commercio di Vancouver.

L’UOMO INNOMINABILE

Il signor Pond mangiava ostriche — spettacolo serio ed edificante. Il suo

amico Wotton non amava le ostriche; diceva di non vedere il

senso di inghiottire qualcosa che quasi non si sente al gusto. Diceva spesso

di non vedere il senso delle cose; ed era sordo alle

struggenti domande dell’amico Gahagan, se magari non potesse per caso

vedere il nonsenso. Non c’era nulla di nonsenso in Sir Hubert

Wotton; e c’era una gran quantità di nonsenso nel Capitano

Gahagan. Gahagan gustava le ostriche, eppure non si poteva dire che gli

for them, being a careless card; and the towers of oyster-shells

before him showed that he had enjoyed them rapidly and recklessly,

as a mere hors d’oeuvre. But Mr. Pond was really caring for

oysters: counting them like sheep and consuming them with the

utmost care.

“It is comparatively little known,” observed Gahagan, “that Pond

actually is an oyster. He builds up out of oysters the permanent

type or image. Hasty naturalists (I need only name the impetuous

Pilk) have repeated the report that he resembles a fish. But what

a fish! It was left to the researches of Nibbles, in his epoch-

making work, Pondus Ostroanthropus, or The Human Oyster Revealed,

to give our friend his high and rightful rank in the biological

order. I need not trouble you with the arguments. Pond wears a

beard. He and the oyster alone confront the world of modern

fashions with such a decoration. When he shuts up his head he is

as close as an oyster. When he persuades us to swallow something,

it is only afterwards (as we have often agreed) that we realize

what a monster of the deep we have swallowed. But, above all,

within that oyster are the paradoxes; which are pearls of great

price.” And he waved a glass towards Pond, as if concluding a

speech and proposing a toast.

Mr. Pond bowed gravely and swallowed another oyster. “As a matter

of fact, I was reminded of something relevant to the discussion by

the sight of the oysters; or, more strictly, of the oyster-shells.

This question of deporting dangerous characters, even when they are

only suspects, has some curious and baffling problems. I remember

one rather queer case, in which a government had to consider the

deporting of a desirable alien—”

“I suppose you mean an undesirable alien,” said Wotton.

Mr. Pond digested another oyster with an unobtrusive gulp and

continued: ”… the deporting of a desirable alien; and it found

that the difficulties were really quite insurmountable. I assure

you I am describing the peculiar position in perfectly appropriate

terms. If any point might be questioned, it is not so much the

word ‘desirable’ as the word ‘alien.’ In one sense, he might have

been described as a very desirable native.”

“Oysters,” said Gahagan mournfully. “The Mind is still brooding

upon oysters. They are certainly very desirable natives.”

“If he was not desirable, he was at least desired,” continued the

unruffled Pond. “No, my dear Gahagan, when I say ‘desired,’ I do

not mean ‘wanted by the police.’ I mean that nearly everybody

wanted him to stay, and that was why it seemed obvious that he must

go. He was something which, without profanity, I trust, I might

call the desire of all nations; or what poets have described as the

world’s desire. And yet he was not deported. Although he was

desired, he was not deported. That is the only real paradox.”

“Oh,” said the staring Wotton. “So that’s the real paradox.”

“You should remember something of the case, Wotton,” went on Mr.

Pond. “It was about that time when we went over to Paris together

about a rather delicate—”

“Pond in Paris,” murmured Gahagan. “Pond in his Pagan Youth, when

(as Swinburne says so beautifully) ‘Love was the pearl of his

oyster and Venus rose red out of wine.’”

“Paris is on the way to many capitals,” replied Pond with

diplomatic reserve. “In any case, there is no need to define the

precise scene of this little international problem. Suffice it to

say that it was one of those many modern States in which a

Republic, resting on representative and democratic claims, has now

long replaced a Monarchy which disappeared somehow amid all the

modern wars and revolutions. Like many such, it did not find all

its troubles were over with the establishment of political

equality; in face of a world deeply disturbed about economic

equality. When I went there, a strike in the transport services

had brought the life of the capital to a deadlock; the Government

was accused of being under the influence of a millionaire named

Kramp, who controlled the lines involved; and the crisis was the

more alarming because it was insisted (on the Government side) that

the strike was secretly engineered by the famous terrorist,

Tarnowski, sometimes called the Tiger of Tartary, who having been

exiled from his own part of Eastern Europe, was believed to be

spreading conspiracies from some unknown hiding-place in the West.”

Mr. Pond then proceeded to narrate his little experience, which,

when purged of Gahagan’s interruptions and Pond’s somewhat needless

exactitudes, was substantially this.

Pond was rather lonely in this strange capital; for Wotton had gone

elsewhere on the other delicate mission; and, having no friends,

Pond picked up only a few acquaintances. But he picked up at least

three acquaintances who turned out to be rather interesting in

various ways. The first case was commonplace enough, it might

seem; consisting merely of talking to a bookseller who was

otherwise a fairly ordinary shopkeeper, but well acquainted with

early eighteenth-century scientific books; and the period was a

hobby with Pond. Otherwise Mr. Huss was highly bourgeois, with a

heavy frockcoat and long, antiquated whiskers which met under his

chin in a patriarchal beard. When he went outside his shop, which

was not often, he wore a funereal chimney-pot hat. Scientific

studies seemed to have left in him the sort of stagnant atheism

that is at once respectable and depressing; but beyond that there

was nothing to distinguish him from countless Continental

shopkeepers. The next man with whom Pond fell into any sort of

conversation, in a café, was much more vigorous and vigilant, and

belonged to a younger world. But he also was very serious; a dark,

strenuous young man who was a Government official actually

importassero, essendo un giocatore sbadato; e le torri di gusci d’ostrica

davanti a lui mostravano che le aveva gustate in fretta e senza riguardo,

come un semplice antipasto. Ma il signor Pond teneva davvero alle

ostriche: contandole come pecore e consumandole con la

massima cura.

“È relativamente poco noto,” osservò Gahagan, “che Pond

in realtà è un’ostrica. Edifica a partire dalle ostriche il tipo o l’immagine

permanente. Naturalisti frettolosi (mi basti nominare l’impetuoso

Pilk) hanno ripetuto la diceria che egli somigli a un pesce. Ma che

pesce! Toccò alle ricerche di Nibbles, nella sua opera epocale,

Pondus Ostroanthropus, ovvero L’Ostrica Umana Svelata,

conferire al nostro amico il suo alto e legittimo rango nell’ordine

biologico. Non starò a tediarvi con gli argomenti. Pond porta la

barba. Egli e l’ostrica soli affrontano il mondo delle mode

moderne con simile ornamento. Quando chiude il capo è

serrato come un’ostrica. Quando ci persuade a inghiottire qualcosa,

è solo dopo (come spesso abbiamo convenuto) che ci accorgiamo

di quale mostro degli abissi abbiamo inghiottito. Ma, soprattutto,

dentro quell’ostrica ci sono i paradossi; che sono perle di gran

pregio.” E agitò un bicchiere verso Pond, come a concludere un

discorso e a proporre un brindisi.

Il signor Pond s’inchinò con gravità e inghiottì un’altra ostrica. “In

verità, la vista delle ostriche mi ha rammentato qualcosa di attinente alla discussione;

o, più propriamente, la vista dei gusci d’ostrica.

Questa questione dell’espulsione di elementi pericolosi, anche quando sono

solo sospetti, presenta problemi curiosi e sconcertanti. Ricordo

un caso piuttosto strano, in cui un governo dovette considerare l’

espulsione di uno straniero desiderabile—”

“Immagino intendiate uno straniero indesiderabile,” disse Wotton.

Il signor Pond digerì un’altra ostrica con un discreto ingozzo e

proseguì: ”… l’espulsione di uno straniero desiderabile; e scoprì

che le difficoltà erano davvero del tutto insormontabili. Vi

assicuro che descrivo la peculiare situazione in termini perfettamente appropriati.

Se un punto potesse esser contestato, non è tanto la

parola ‘desiderabile’ quanto la parola ‘straniero.’ In un certo senso, egli avrebbe potuto

esser descritto come un nativo assai desiderabile.”

“Ostriche,” disse Gahagan mestamente. “La Mente rimugina ancora

sulle ostriche. Sono di certo natìe assai desiderabili.”

“Se non era desiderabile, era quantomeno desiderato,” proseguì l’

imperturbabile Pond. “No, mio caro Gahagan, quando dico ‘desiderato,’ non

intendo ‘ricercato dalla polizia.’ Intendo che quasi tutti

volevano che restasse, e per questo pareva ovvio che dovesse

andarsene. Era qualcosa che, senza empietà, spero, potrei

chiamare il Desiderio di tutte le nazioni; o ciò che i poeti hanno descritto come il

Desiderio del mondo. Eppure non fu espulso. Benché fosse

desiderato, non fu espulso. Questo è l’unico vero paradosso.”

“Oh,” disse Wotton fissandolo. “Così quello è il vero paradosso.”

“Dovreste ricordare qualcosa del caso, Wotton,” proseguì il signor

Pond. “Fu più o meno all’epoca in cui andammo a Parigi insieme

per una faccenda piuttosto delicata—”

“Pond a Parigi,” mormorò Gahagan. “Pond nella sua Pagana Giovinezza, quando

(come dice Swinburne così mirabilmente) ‘l’Amore era la perla della sua

ostrica e Venere sorse rossa dal vino.’”

“Parigi è sulla strada per molte capitali,” rispose Pond con

diplomatica riservatezza. “In ogni caso, non c’è bisogno di definire la

scena precisa di questo piccolo problema internazionale. Basti

dire che si trattava di uno di quei molti Stati moderni in cui una

Repubblica, poggiante su pretese rappresentative e democratiche, ha ormai da

tempo rimpiazzato una Monarchia scomparsa in qualche modo tra tutte le

guerre e rivoluzioni moderne. Come molti simili, non trovò tutti

i suoi guai finiti con l’instaurazione dell’uguaglianza politica; a

fronte di un mondo profondamente turbato dall’uguaglianza economica.

Quando vi andai, uno sciopero nei servizi di trasporto

aveva bloccato la vita della capitale in un vicolo cieco; il Governo

era accusato di essere sotto l’influenza di un milionario di nome

Kramp, che controllava le linee coinvolte; e la crisi era tanto

più allarmante perché si insisteva (dal lato del Governo) che

lo sciopero fosse segretamente orchestrato dal famoso terrorista,

Tarnowski, talvolta detto la Tigre della Tartaria, il quale essendo stato

esiliato dalla sua parte d’Europa orientale, si credeva

diffondesse cospirazioni da qualche ignoto nascondiglio in Occidente.”

Il signor Pond passò allora a narrare la sua piccola esperienza, la quale,

depurata delle interruzioni di Gahagan e delle alquanto superflue

esattezze di Pond, era in sostanza questa.

Pond era piuttosto solo in quella strana capitale; poiché Wotton era andato

altrove nell’altra delicata missione; e, non avendo amici,

Pond raccolse solo poche conoscenze. Ma ne raccolse almeno

tre che si rivelarono piuttosto interessanti in

vari modi. Il primo caso era abbastanza banale, a quanto

pareva; consistente solo nel parlare con un libraio che era

per il resto un negoziante piuttosto ordinario, ma ben versato in

libri scientifici del primo Settecento; e il periodo era una

fissazione di Pond. Per il resto, il signor Huss era spiccatamente borghese, con una

pesante finanziera e lunghe basette antiquate che si univano sotto il

mento in una barba patriarcale. Quando usciva dal negozio, cosa

non frequente, indossava un funereo cilindro. Gli studi

scientifici parevano avergli lasciato quella sorta di stagnante ateismo

che è al contempo rispettabile e deprimente; ma oltre a ciò non c’era

nulla a distinguerlo da innumerevoli negozianti

continentali. Il successivo con cui Pond attaccò una qualche sorta di

conversazione, in un caffè, era assai più vigoroso e vigile, e

apparteneva a un mondo più giovane. Ma anch’egli era molto serio; un

giovane bruno e scattante che era un funzionario del Governo, in verità

believing in the Government; or at least in the principles of the

Government; and he was the sort of man who thinks first about

principles. He denounced the strike and even the trade union; not

because he was a snob, for he lived as simply as a workman; but

because he really did believe in the old individualistic theory of

what he called free contract. The type is almost unknown in

England; the theory is more common in America. But nobody who

looked at the baldish, rather corrugated brow that bulged between

the streaks of black hair, and the anxious, though angry, eyes,

could doubt that he was in fanatical good faith. His name was

Marcus, and he held a minor Government office, in which he could

survey with satisfaction the principles of the Republic, without

being admitted to its counsels. It was while talking outside a

café with this second acquaintance, that Mr. Pond became conscious

of the third, who was by far the most extraordinary of the three.

This man was a sort of magnet for the human eye; Pond soon realized

that this was true of everybody’s eyes and not merely his own. One

way or another, a current of communications seemed to be always

circling round the little table where the man sat smoking a

cigarette and sipping black coffee and benedictine. At the moment

when Pond first saw him, a group of young men was breaking up after

some tangle of talk and laughter; they seemed to have stopped by

the table merely for the sake of the talk. The next moment a

string of gutter-children invaded his solitude and received the

pieces of sugar not used for his coffee; then a hulking and rather

sulky-looking labourer came up and talked to him, for a much longer

time than any of the others. Strangest of all, a lady, of the

stiff aristocratic sort seldom seen outside the house in such

countries, actually got out of a carriage and stood staring at the

strange gentleman; and then got into the carriage again. These

things alone might have led Pond to look at the person in question;

but in fact, for some reason or other, he had looked at him with

great curiosity from the first.

The man wore a wide white hat and a rather shabby dark blue suit;

he had a high-bridged nose and a pale yellow beard brushed to a

point. He had long, bony, but elegant, hands, on one of which was

a ring with a stone coloured like a kingfisher, the only spot of

luxury on what was otherwise a rather threadbare appearance; and in

the grey shadow of the white hat his eyes shone as blue as the

stone. There was nothing in his position that claimed prominence;

he did not sit in the front but up against the wall of the café,

just under a creeper and a fire-escape. Despite the little crowds

that clustered round him, he had in the intervals an odd air of

preferring to be alone. Pond made many inquiries, then and

afterwards, about his name; but learnt nothing except that he was

commonly called M. Louis; but whether that was his real surname, or

perhaps the adaptation of some foreign surname, or whether his

queer and eccentric popularity led everybody to use his Christian

name, did not very clearly emerge.

“Marcus,” said Mr. Pond to his young companion, “who IS this man?”

“Everybody knows him and nobody knows who he is,” replied Marcus in

a rather grating voice. “But I’m jolly well going to find out.”

As he spoke, the hawkers of the revolutionary paper, published by

the strikers and conspicuous by being printed on vivid scarlet

paper, were distributing it among a considerable number of

purchasers in the crowd outside the café; a black block thus

rapidly diversified with blots of blood-red colour. Some, indeed,

looked at the paper only to jeer at it; some with a colder

curiosity; perhaps only a few with the respect of real sympathizers.

Among those reading it with detachment, but not apparently with

definite disapproval, was the gentleman with the beard and the blue

ring: M. Louis.

“Well,” said Marcus, with a darkening brow. “Let them. It’s their

last chance, I suppose.”

“Why, what do you mean?” inquired Pond.

The brow of Marcus became still more corrugated and troubled; at

length he said in a gruff and rather reluctant manner: “I’m bound

to say I don’t approve of it myself. I can’t see how the Republic

can reconcile it with its liberal principles to suppress

newspapers. But they’re going to suppress that newspaper. They’ve

been a good deal goaded. I don’t believe the Prime Minister

himself really likes the suppression; but the Minister of the

Interior is a fiery little devil and generally gets his own way.

Anyhow, they’re going to raid the offices with police to-morrow;

and that’s probably the last issue.”

M. Marcus proved himself a true prophet, so far as concerned the

general situation next morning.

There had apparently been another issue; but if it had ever been

displayed it had not been successfully distributed; the police had

seized all copies of it everywhere; and the black-clad bourgeoisie

sitting outside the café were now blameless and unspotted with any

hues of blood; save in one corner under the fire-escape and the

creeper, where M. Louis was reading his copy of the sanguinary

sheet in complete indifference to the change. Some of those around

him eyed him slightly askance; and Pond specially noticed Mr. Huss,

the bookseller, complete with black top-hat and white whiskers,

seated at a table close by and eyeing the reader of the red paper

with bristling suspicion.

Marcus and Pond took their seats at their own original table; and

even as they did so, a contingent of police came by, marching very

rapidly, cleaning up the streets. There marched with them, with

yet more furious rapidity, a squat, square man with arrogant

moustaches, wearing an official decoration and flourishing an

umbrella like a sabre. This was the eminent and highly militant

Dr. Koch, the Minister of the Interior; he had been presiding over

the police raid, and his rolling eye instantly spotted the one red

spot in the corner of the crowded café. He planted himself before

M. Louis; and shouted as if on parade:

“You are forbidden to read that paper. It contains direct

incitement to crime.”

“And how,” asked M. Louis courteously, “and how can I discover this

deplorable fact except by reading it?”

Something in that polite tone seemed, for some odd reason, to cause

the Minister of the Interior to fly, as the phrase goes, right off

the handle. Pointing his umbrella at the man in the café, he

vociferated with a violent distinctness:

“You could be arrested, you could be deported; and you know why.

Not for all that bloody nonsense. You don’t need that scrap of a

scarlet rag to mark you out among decent citizens.”

“Because my own sins are as scarlet,” said the other, gently

inclining his head, “the scandal of my presence here is indeed

highly scandalous. And why don’t you arrest me?”

“You wait and see whether we arrest you,” said the Minister

grinding his teeth. “Anyhow, you shan’t arrest us or hold up the

whole machinery of society by a trick like this. Do you think we

will let that sort of dirty little red rusty nail in the road stop

all the wheels of progress?”

“And do you think,” answered the other sternly, “that all the

wheels of your sort of progress have ever done anything yet but

grind the faces of the poor? No; I have not the honour of being

one of the citizens of your State; one of those happy, joyful, well-

fed, wealthy citizens one sees standing about in the street, on

whom you wage war by hunger. But I am not a subject of any foreign

State; and you will have quite a peculiar difficulty in deporting

me back to my own country.”

The Minister took one furious step forward; and then stopped. Then

he walked off twirling his moustaches, as if suddenly forgetting

the very existence of the other; and followed in the track of the

police.

“There seem to be a number of mysteries here,” said Mr. Pond to his

friend. “First, why should he be deported? Second, why shouldn’t

he be deported?”

“I don’t know,” said Marcus, and stood up stiff and frowning.

“All the same,” said Mr. Pond, “I am beginning to have a sort of

fancy about who he is.”

“Yes,” said Marcus grimly, “and I’m beginning to have a fancy about

what he is. Not a nice fancy.” And he strode abruptly away from

the table and up the street alone.

Mr. Pond remained seated in a condition of profound thought. After

some minutes he rose and made his way towards the table where his

friend the bookseller, the excellent Huss, was still seated in

somewhat darkling majesty.

Even as he crossed the crowded trottoir, a roar broke from the

street behind him, which was filling with twilight; and he realized

that the great grey crowd of the strikers was on the march past,

following the same route as the police who had just cleared out

their offices. But the cause of the cry was more particular and

even personal. The sardonic eyes of the semi-starving mob had

swept the whole dark and decorous crowd of respectable people

outside the café, and marked the absence of their proscribed paper;

then they had suddenly perceived the familiar red flare of its

fluttering pages in the hands of M. Louis, who was continuing to

read it with unaltered calm. All the strikers stood still, halting

and saluting like an army; and a great shout, seeming to shake the

lamp-posts and little trees, went up for the one man who remained

faithful to the red rag. M. Louis rose and gravely bowed to the

applauding mob. Mr. Pond sat down opposite his friend the

bookseller and scrutinized his whiskered face with interest.

“Well,” said Mr. Pond, “our friend over there looks as if he might

soon be the leader of the revolutionary party.”

This remark had a rather strange effect on Mr. Huss; he started as

in disorder by saying: “No, no”; controlled his countenance, and

then enunciated a number of short sentences with an extraordinary

exactitude.

“Myself of the bourgeoisie, I have yet remained apart from

politics. I have taken no part in any class-war proceeding under

present conditions. I have no reason to identify myself either

with the protest of the proletariat or with the present phase of

capitalism.”

“Oh,” said Mr. Pond; and an understanding began to dawn in his

eyes. After a moment he said: “I apologize most sincerely, old

man. I didn’t know you were a Communist.”

“I have confessed to nothing of the sort,” said Huss heatedly; then

he added abruptly: “You will say somebody has betrayed me.”

“Your speech betrays you, like the Galilean,” said Pond. “Every

sect talks its own language. You could tell a man was a Buddhist

from his way of saying he was not a Buddhist. It’s no business of

mine; and I won’t mention it to a soul, if you prefer not. I only

ventured to say that the man over there seems to be very popular

with the strikers, and might lead the movement.”

“No, no, no,” cried Huss, beating on the table with his two fists.

“Never, never, shall he lead the movement! Understand me! We are

a scientific movement. We are not moral. We have done with

bourgeois ideologies of right and wrong. We are Realpolilik. What

helps the program of Marx is alone good. What hinders the program

of Marx is alone evil. But there are limits. There are names so

infamous, there are persons so infamous, that they must always be

excluded from the Party.”

“You mean somebody is so wicked that he has awakened a dormant

moral sense even in a Bolshevist bookseller,” said Pond. “Why,

what has he done?”

“It is not only what he does but what he is,” said Mr. Huss.

“Curious that you should say that,” said Pond. “For I have just

made a sort of a guess about what he is.”

He took a newspaper-cutting from his waistcoat pocket and pushed it

across to the other, remarking casually: “You will note that

Tarnowski the Terrorist is now said to be fomenting strikes and

revolutions not only in this country but definitely in this

capital. Well, our friend in the white hat seems to me to be

rather an old hand.”

Huss was still drumming faintly on the table and obscurely

muttering: “Never, never, shall he be the leader.”

“But suppose he is the leader?” said Pond. “He obviously has a

sort of habit of old leadership about him; a sort of gesture of

authority. Isn’t he going on exactly as Tarnowski the Tiger

probably would go on?”

Mr. Pond may have expected to surprise the bookseller; but it was

Mr. Pond who got the surprise. The effect on the bookseller was

such that surprise would be a comically inadequate description.

Mr. Huss stiffened and sat as still as a stone idol; but the change

in the face of the graven image was appalling. It suggested some

nightmare story of a man at a solitary table finding he was dining

with a devil.

“My God,” said the atheist at last, in a small, weak rather squeaky

voice, “and so you think HE is Tarnowski!” And with that, the

bookseller in the top-hat suddenly went off into hoots of hollow

laughter, like the dismal noises of an owl, shrill and monotonous

and apparently to be repeated indefinitely without control.

“Well,” interrupted Pond, mildly exasperated, “how can you possibly

know that he is not Tarnowski?”

“Only because I am Tarnowski,” said the bookseller, with sudden

sobriety. “You say you are not a spy. But you can betray me if

you choose.”

“I assure Your Excellency,” said Mr. Pond, “that I am not a spy or

even, what is worse, a gossip. I am only a tourist who is not

talkative and a traveller who tells no traveller’s tales. Besides,

I owe a debt to Your Excellency, for having illuminated my mind

with an important principle. I never saw it so clearly before. A

man always says exactly what he means; but especially when he hides

it.”

“That,” observed the other with guttural slowness, “is what I think

you call a paradox.”

“Oh, don’t say that,” groaned Mr. Pond. “Everybody in England says

that. And I have honestly no notion of what it means.”

“But in that case,” said Mr. Pond to himself, “who on earth IS the

man in the white hat? What crime has he committed? What crime is

it for which he can be arrested or deported? Or again, what crime

is it for which he CAN’T be arrested or deported?”

It was in a burst of splendid sunshine, on the following morning,

that Pond sat at his little table in the café ruminating on the

renewed difficulties of the problem. The sun gave a sort of golden

gaiety to a scene that had lately looked rather sombre, and even

black, bloodshot with the glimpses of the Bolshevist journal. In

the social sense at least, there seemed to be a clearance in the

storm, of the strikers if not the strike; the threat of riots had

been outmanoeuvred; and the police were picketed at intervals down

the street; but seemed in the tranquil sunshine as harmless as the

toy trees and the painted lamp-posts. Mr. Pond felt an irrational

return of that vague exhilaration which an Englishman sometimes

feels in the mere fact of being abroad; the smell of the French

coffee affected him as some are affected by the smell of hayfields

or the sea. M. Louis had resumed his amiable hobby of distributing

sugar to the gamins; and the very shape of those oblong blocks of

beetroot-sugar pleased Mr. Pond in the same manner. He had a hazy

feeling that he was looking at the scene through the eyes of one of

the children. Even the gendarmes posted along the pavement amused

him in a merely nonsensical manner, as if they had been dolls or

dummies in some delightful puppet-play; their cocked hats carrying

a vague memory of the beadle in a Punch-and-Judy show. Through all

this coloured comedy there advanced the rigid figure of M. Marcus,

with a visage which announced vividly that that political Puritan

did not believe in puppet-shows.

“Well,” he said, glaring at Pond with a sort of controlled rage, “I

fancy I can guess the truth about HIM.”

Pond made polite inquiries; and was answered by an unexpectedly

ugly and jeering laugh.

“What sort of man is it,” asked Marcus, “who is received everywhere

with bows and smiles? Who is it to whom everybody is always so

courteous and complimentary? What generous Friend of the People?

What holy Father of the Poor? Deported! That sort of fellow ought

to be hanged.”

“I fear I do not understand anything yet,” answered Pond mildly,

“except that for some reason he cannot even be deported.”

“Looks very patriarchal, doesn’t he, sitting in the sunshine and

playing with the children? It was darker last night and I caught

him in a darker piece of business… . Listen to this, first of

all. It was at the end of dusk, yesterday evening; and but for

myself, he was alone in the café; I don’t think he saw me; but I

don’t know if he would care. There drove up a dark, closely

curtained carriage; and that lady we saw once before got out; a

very grand lady, I am sure, though I fancy not so rich as she had

been. She had an interview with this man, in which she actually

went on her knees to him on the muddy pavement, begging him for

something; and he only sat there and smiled. What sort of a man is

it who sees ladies grovelling before him and only grins like a

demon and doesn’t even take off his hat? What sort of man is it

who can play the Sultan in society and be sure that everybody will

smile and be polite? Only the very basest sort of criminal.”

“In plain words,” said Mr. Pond, “you mean he ought to be arrested

because he’s a blackmailer. You also mean he can’t be arrested

because he’s a blackmailer.”

For the first time the rage of Marcus seemed mixed with a sort of

embarrassment, almost amounting to shame, as he looked down

scowling at the table.

“It has no doubt occurred to you,” proceeded Pond placidly, “that

the second inference involves some suggestions that are rather

delicate; especially if I may say so, for a man in your position.”

Marcus remained in a silence swollen with anger; then at last he

broke out abruptly, as if beyond control: “I’ll swear the Prime

Minister is perfectly honest.”

“I do not think,” said Mr. Pond, “that I have ever regaled you with

any scandals about the Prime Minister.”

“And I can’t believe the little doctor is really in it,” went on

Marcus savagely. “I’ve always thought it was just sincerity that

made him spluttering and spiteful. It was just trying to be

straight amid all this—”

“All this what?” asked Mr. Pond.

Marcus turned in his chair with an abrupt gesture of the elbow,

saying: “Oh, you don’t understand.”

“On the contrary,” replied Pond. “I think I do understand.”

There was a lengthy silence and then Pond resumed:

“I understand the horrid truth that you yourself are a perfectly

honourable and high-minded person and that your own problem is

extremely difficult to solve. I assure you that I am quite

incapable of taunting you with it. It was to the Republic, to the

idea of equality and justice, that you swore loyalty; and to that

you have been loyal.”

“You had better say what you think.” said Marcus gloomily. “You

mean that I am really only serving a gang of crooks, whom any

blackguard can blackmail.”

“No, I will not ask you to admit that now,” answered Pond. “Just

now I wanted to ask you quite another question. Can’t you imagine

a man sympathizing with the strikers, or even being a sincere

Socialist?”

“Well,” replied Marcus, after a spasm of concentration, “I suppose

one ought to imagine. I suppose he might hold that, the Republic

resting on the Social Contract, it might supersede even free

contracts.”

“Thank you,” said Mr. Pond with satisfaction, “that is exactly what

I wanted. It is an important contribution to Pond’s Law of

Paradox, if I may be pardoned for expressing myself so playfully.

And now let us go and talk to M. Louis.”

He stood up before the astonished official, who had no apparent

alternative but to follow him as he passed swiftly across the café.

Some vivacious and talkative young men were taking leave of M.

Louis, who courteously invited the newcomers to the empty chairs,

saying something about “my young friends often enliven my solitude

with their rather Socialistic views.”

“I should not agree with your young friends,” said Marcus curtly,

“I am so old-fashioned as to believe in free contract.”

“I, being older, perhaps believe in it even more,” answered M.

Louis smiling. “But surely it is a very old principle of law that

a leonine contract is not a free contract. And it is hypocrisy to

pretend that a bargain between a starving man and a man with all

the food is anything but a leonine contract.” He glanced up at the

fire-escape, a ladder leading up to the balcony of a very high

attic above. “I live in that garret; or rather on that balcony.

If I fell off the balcony and hung on a spike, so far from the

steps that somebody with a ladder could offer to rescue me if I

gave him a hundred million francs, I should be quite morally

justified in using his ladder and then telling him to go to hell

for his hundred million. Hell, indeed, is not out of the picture;

for it is a sin of injustice to force an advantage against the

desperate. Well, all those poor men are desperate; they all hang

starving on spikes. If they must not bargain collectively, they

cannot bargain at all. You are not supporting contract; you are

opposing all contract; for yours cannot be a real contract at all.”

While the smoke of his cigarette mounted towards the balcony, Mr.

Pond’s eye followed it and found the balcony fitted out with what

looked like a bedstead, a screen, and an old looking-glass, all

very shabby. The only other object was a dusty old cross-hilted

sword, such as might have come from a curiosity shop. Mr. Pond

eyed this last object with considerable curiosity.

“Please permit me to play the host,” said M. Louis affably.

“Perhaps you would like a cocktail or something; I stick to a

little benedictine.”

As he turned in his chair towards the waiter, a shot rang through

the café and the little glass before him lay in a star of

splinters. The bullet that spilt the drink had missed the drinker

by half a yard. Marcus looked wildly round; the café was deserted,

for it was already late; no figure was in sight but the solid back

of the gendarme standing outside. But Marcus went white with

horror; for M. Louis made one quaint little gesture which, if it

meant anything, could only mean that the policeman himself had

turned for an instant and fired.

“A little reminder, perhaps, that it is time to go to bed,” said M.

Louis gaily. “I go up by the fire-escape and I sleep on the

balcony. Doctors think so much of this open-air treatment. Well,

my people have always gone to bed in public; so many tramps do,

don’t they? Good night, gentlemen.”

He lightly scaled the iron ladder and began on the balcony, before

their astonished eyes, to assume a capacious dressing-gown and

prepare for slumber.

“Pond,” said Marcus, “we are in a nightmare of nonsense.”

“No,” replied Pond, “for the first lime it begins to make sense. I

have been stupid; but I am beginning at last to see what it all

means.” After ruminating a moment, he resumed rather apologetically:

“Forgive me if I refer again to my foolish jest about Pond’s Law.

I think I have discovered a rather useful principle. It is this.

Men may argue FOR principles not entirely their own, for various

reasons; as a joke in a rag debate, or covered by professional

etiquette, like a barrister, or merely exaggerating something

neglected and needing emphasis; long before we come to those who do

it hypocritically or for hire. A man can argue FOR principles not

his own. But a man cannot argue FROM principles not his own; the

first principles he assumes, even for sophistry or advocacy, will

probably be his own fundamental first principles. The very

language he uses will betray him. That Bolshevist bookseller

professed to be a bourgeois; but he talked like a Bolshevist about

a bourgeois. He talked about exploitation and the class-war. So

you tried to imagine yourself a Socialist; but you did not talk

like a Socialist. You talked about the Social Contract, like old

Rousseau. Now our friend M. Louis was defending his sympathy with

strikers and even Socialists. But he used the oldest and most

traditional argument of all, older than the Roman Law. The idea

about leonine contract is as old as Leo and a long sight older than

Leo XIII. Therefore, he represents something even older than your

Rousseau and your Revolution. I knew after five words that he was

not the blackmailing blackguard of romance; and yet he is romantic.

And he could be legally arrested; but only for a rather curious

crime. And yet again, he cannot be arrested. He can only be

assassinated.

“The blackmail charge rests on one scene, in which a lady knelt to

him in the street. You argued truly that ladies in your country

think so much of formality and propriety, that they could never do

this except in some extreme of agony and despair. It did not occur

to you that, perhaps, it might be only an extreme of formality and

propriety.”

Marcus began slowly: “What the devil—” And then Mr. Pond rapped

out quite smartly: “And then the sword. What is a sword FOR?

It’s absurd to say for fighting; he wouldn’t wave a mediæval sword

against people shooting him with guns. If it were for duels he

would have a duelling-sword; and probably two in a case. What else

can you do with a sword? Well, you can swallow it; and at one time

I really had a fancy he might be a conjurer. But it’s too big a

swallow; so is the notion. What CAN be done with a sword, but not

with a spear or gun or battle-axe? Have you heard of the Accolade?

Long ago a man could be knighted by any knight; but by all modern

custom it can only be done—”

“Only—” began Marcus, beginning to stare.

“Only by a King,” said Pond. And the young Republican sprang up

rigid at the challenge.

“Yes,” continued Pond, “the King has crept back among you. It is

not your fault. Republics might be all right if Republicans were

as honourable as you are; but you have confessed that they are

not … and that’s what he meant about going to bed in public.

You know the old kings really did. But he had another reason. He

had one real fear; that they might deport him secretly. They could

deport him technically, of course; all these Republics have laws

against Royalist claimants remaining in the realm. But if they did

it publicly, he would proclaim himself and—”

“Why don’t they do it publicly?” asked the Republican explosively.

“Politicians do not understand much; but politicians do understand

politics,” said Pond pensively. “I mean they do understand the

IMMEDIATE effect on mobs and movements. Somehow he had slipped in

and started a campaign of private popularity before they even knew

who he was. When once he was popular, they were helpless. How

could they say: ‘Yes, he is popular, he is on the side of the

people and the poor; the young men accept his leadership; but he is

the King and therefore he must go’? They know how horribly near

the world is to answering: ‘Yes; he is the King and, by God, he

shall stay.’”

Mr. Pond had told this story, at somewhat greater length but in far

more classic diction; and by that time had actually finished the

oysters. He gazed pensively at the shells and added: “You will of

course recall the meaning of the word ostracism. It meant that in

ancient Athens a man was sometimes exiled merely for being

important; and the votes were recorded by oyster-shells. In this

case he should have been exiled for being important; but he was so

very important that nobody could be told of his importance.”

RING OF LOVERS

“As I said before,” observed Mr. Pond, towards the end of one of

his lucid but rather lengthy speeches, “our friend Gahagan here is

a very truthful man and tells wanton and unnecessary lies. But

this very truthfulness—”

Captain Gahagan waved a gloved hand as in courteous acknowledgement

of anything anybody liked to say; he had an especially flamboyant

flower in his coat and looked unusually gay. But Sir Hubert

Wotton, the third party at the little conference, sat up. For he

followed the flow of words with tireless, intelligent attention,

while Gahagan, though radiant, seemed rather abstracted; and these

abrupt absurdities always brought Sir Hubert up standing.

“Say that again,” he said, not without sarcasm.

“Surely that is obvious enough,” pleaded Mr. Pond. “A real liar

does not tell wanton and unnecessary lies. He tells wise and

necessary lies. It was not necessary for Gahagan to tell us once

that he had seen not one sea-serpent but six sea-serpents, each

larger than the last; still less to inform us that each reptile in

turn swallowed the last one whole; and that the last of all was

opening its mouth to swallow the ship, when he saw it was only a

yawn after too heavy a meal, and the monster suddenly went to

sleep. I will not dwell on the mathematical symmetry with which

snake within snake yawned, and snake within snake went to sleep,

all except the smallest, which had had no dinner and walked out to

look for some. It was not, I say, necessary for Gahagan to tell

this story. It was hardly even wise. It is very unlikely that it

would promote his worldly prospects, or gain him any rewards or

decorations for scientific research. The official scientific

world, I know not why, is prejudiced against any story even of one

sea-serpent, and would be the less likely to accept the narrative

in its present form.

“Or again, when Captain Gahagan told us he had been a Broad

Church missionary, and had readily preached in the pulpits of

Nonconformists, then in the mosques of Moslems, then in the

monasteries of Tibet, but was most warmly welcomed by a mystical

sect of Theists in those parts, people in a state of supreme

spiritual exaltation who worshipped him like a god, until he found

they were enthusiasts for Human Sacrifice and he was the victim.

This statement was also quite unnecessary. To have been a

latitudinarian clergyman is but little likely to advance him in his

present profession, or to fit him for his present pursuits. I

suspect the story was partially a parable or allegory. But anyhow,

it was quite unnecessary and it was obviously untrue. And when a

thing is obviously untrue, it is obviously not a lie.”

“Suppose,” said Gahagan abruptly, “suppose I were to tell you a

story that really is true?”

“I should regard it with great suspicion,” said Wotton grimly.

“You mean you would think I was still romancing. But why?”

“Because it would be so very like a romance,” retorted Wotton.

“But don’t you think,” asked the Captain thoughtfully, “that real

life sometimes is like a romance?”

“I think,” replied Wotton, with a certain genuine shrewdness that

lay very deep in him, “that I could always really tell the

difference.”

“You are right,” said Pond; “and it seems to me the difference is

this. Life is artistic in parts, but not as a whole; it’s like

broken bits of different works of art. When everything hangs

together, and it all fits in, we doubt. I might even believe that

Gahagan saw six sea-serpents; but not that each was larger than the

last. If he’d said there was first a large one and then a little

one and then a larger one, he might have taken us in. We often say

that one social situation is like being in a novel; but it doesn’t

finish like the novel—at least, not the same novel.”

“Pond,” said Gahagan, “I sometimes think you are inspired, or

possessed of a devil in a quiet way. It’s queer you should say

that; because my experience was just like that. With this

difference; each familiar melodrama broke off; but only turned to

blacker melodrama—or tragedy. Again and again, in this affair, I

thought I was in a magazine story; and then it turned to quite

another story. Sort of dissolving view, or a nightmare.

Especially a nightmare.”

“And why especially?” asked Wotton.

“It’s a horrible story,” said Gahagan, lowering his voice. “But

it’s not so horrible now.”

“Of course,” said Mr. Pond, nodding. “You are happy and wish to

tell us a horrible story.”

“And what does THAT mean?” demanded Wotton.

“It means,” said Gahagan, “that I got engaged to be married this

morning.”

“The devil you—I beg your pardon,” said Wotton, very red in the

face. “Congratulations, of course, and all that. But what has it

to do with the nightmare?”

“There is a connexion,” said Gahagan dreamily. “But you want the

horrible story and not the happy one. Well, it was a bit of a

mystery, at least to me; but I understood it at last.”

“And when you’ve done mystifying us, you will tell us the

solution?”

“No; Pond will tell you the solution,” said Gahagan maliciously.

“He’s already puffed up because he guessed the kind of story,

before he even heard it. If he can’t finish the story, when he has

heard it—”

He broke off and then resumed more solidly:

“It began with a dinner-party, what they call a stag-party, given

by Lord Crome, following on a cocktail-party mostly given by Lady

Crome. Lady Crome was a tall and swift and graceful person with a

small dark head. Lord Crome was quite the reverse; he was in every

way, physical and mental, a ‘long-headed’ person. You’ve heard of

a hatchet-face; his was a hatchet that cut off his own head—or

rather his own body, abolishing the slighter and more insignificant

figure. He is an economist and he gave one the impression of being

distrait and rather bored with all the ladies who swam about in the

wake of his wonderful wife, that darting swan; and perhaps that was

why he wanted the cooler society of his own sex. Anyhow, he kept

some of his male guests for a little dinner after the at-home was

over. I happened to be one of them; but, in spite of that, it was

a select company.

“It was a select company; and yet it hardly seemed to have been

selected. They were mostly well-known men, and yet it looked as if

Crome had taken their names out of a hat. The first person I ran

into was Captain Blande, supposed to be one of the biggest officers

in the British Army, and I should think the stupidest, for any

strategic purposes. Of course he looks magnificent—like a

chryselephantine statue of Hercules, and about as useful in time of

war. I once used the word ‘chryselephantine,’ meaning gold and

ivory; and he thought I was calling him elephantine. Classical

education of the pukka sahib. Well, the man he was put next to was

Count Kranz, the Hungarian scientist and social reformer. He

speaks twenty-seven languages, including philosophical language. I

wonder what language he talked to Captain Blande in. Just beyond

the Count was another fellow more of Blande’s sort; but darker and

leaner and livelier; a fellow called Wooster of some Bengal

regiment. His language also would be limited: the Latin verb polo,

polas, polat; I play polo, thou playest polo, he plays polo, or

(more devastatingly) he does not play polo. But just as polo

itself was an Asiatic game, and can be traced through the gilded

jungle of Persian and Indian illuminations, so there was something

faintly Eurasian about this man Wooster; he was like a dark-striped

tiger and one could fancy him gliding through a jungle. That pair

at least looked a little more well-matched; for Kranz also was dark

and good-looking, with arched, black, Assyrian eyebrows and a long,

dark beard, spreading like a fan or the forked tail of a bird. I

sat next, and got on with Wooster pretty well; on the other side of

me was Sir Oscar Marvell, the great actor-manager, all very fine

and large, with the Olympian curls and the Roman nose. Here also

there was some lack of rapport. Sir Oscar Marvell didn’t want to

talk about anything but Sir Oscar Marvell; and the other men didn’t

want to talk about Sir Oscar Marvell at all. The three remaining

men were the new Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Pitt-Palmer,

a very frigid-looking young man like the bust of Augustus Cæsar—

and indeed HE was classical enough, and could have quoted the

classics all right; one Italian singer, whose name I could not

remember, and one Polish diplomat, whose name nobody could

remember. And I was saying to myself all the time: ‘What a funny

collection!’”

“I know this story,” said Wotton positively. “A humorous host

collects a lot of incompatible people for the pleasure of hearing

them quarrel. Done very well in one of Anthony Berkeley’s

detective stories.”

“No,” replied Gahagan. “I think their incompatibility was quite

accidental, and I know that Crome didn’t use it to make them

quarrel. As a matter of fact, he was a most tactful host, and it

would be truer to say he prevented them from quarrelling. He did

it rather cleverly, too, by beginning to talk about heirlooms and

family jewels and so on. Different as they were, most of them were

well-off, and what is called of a good family; and it was about as

close to common ground as they could get. The Pole, who was a

baldish but graceful person, with very charming manners, and much

the wittiest man at table, was giving an amusing account of the

adventures of a medal of Sobieski when it fell into the hands first

of a Jew, and then of a Prussian, and then of a Cossack. In

contrast to the Pole, who was hairless and talkative, the Italian

beyond him was silent, and rather sulky, under his bush of black

hair.

“‘That’s an interesting-looking ring you are wearing yourself, Lord

Crome,’ said the Pole politely. ‘Those heavy rings are generally

historic. I think I should really like to wear an episcopal ring

or, better still, a Papal ring. But then there are all those

tiresome preliminaries about being made Pope; it involves celibacy;

and I—’ And he shrugged his shoulders.

“‘Very annoying, no doubt,’ said Lord Crome, smiling at him grimly.

‘As for this ring here—well, it is rather interesting in a way, in

that sort of family way, of course. I don’t know the details, but

it is obviously sixteenth century. Care to look at it?’ And he

slipped off his finger a heavy ring with a red stone and passed it

to the Pole, who was silting next to him. It proved on examination

to be set with a cluster of extremely fine rubies and carved with a

central device of a heart inside a rose. I saw it myself, since it

was handed round the table; and there was some lettering in old

French which meant something like ‘From the lover only and only to

the beloved.’

“‘A romance in your family history, I suppose?’ suggested the

Hungarian Count. ‘And about the sixteenth century. But you do not

know the story?”

“‘No,’ said Crome, ‘but I suppose it was, as you say, a romance in

the family.’

“They began talking about sixteenth-century romances, at some

length; and at last Crome asked very courteously if everybody had

seen the ring.”

“Oh,” cried Wotton, with a deep breath, rather like a schoolboy at

a conjurer’s performance. “I know THIS story, anyhow. This is a

magazine story, if you like! The ring wasn’t returned and

everybody was searched or somebody refused to be searched; and

there was some awfully romantic reason for his refusing to be

searched.”

“You are right,” said Gahagan. “Right, up to a point. The ring

was not returned. We were all searched. We all insisted on being

searched. Nobody refused to be searched. But the ring was gone.”

Gahagan turned rather restlessly and threw an elbow over the back

of his chair; after a moment he went on:

“Please don’t imagine I didn’t feel all you say; that we seemed to

have got inside a novel; and not a very novel sort of novel. But

the difference was exactly what Pond says: that the novel didn’t

finish properly, but seemed to go on to something else. We had

just reached about the coffee stage of the dinner, while this fuss

about the first discovery of the loss was being discussed. But all

the nonsense about searching was really very swift and simple; and

the coffee hadn’t even got cold in the interlude, though Crome

offered to send for some more. We all said that of course it

didn’t matter; but Crome summoned the butler who’d been handing it

round; and they whispered together in what was obviously a rather

agitated conversation. Then, just as Pitt-Palmer was lifting his

coffee cup to his lips, Lord Crome sprang up stiff and bristling

and called out like the crack of a whip:

“‘Gentlemen, do not touch this coffee. It is poisoned.’”

“But dash it all,” interrupted Wotton, “that’s a different story!

I say, Gahagan, are you sure you didn’t dream all this? After

reading through a stack of out-of-date magazines and mixing up all

the results? Of course we know the story about a whole company

laid out with poison—”

“The results in this case were rather more extraordinary,” said

Gahagan calmly. “Most of us naturally sat like stone statues under

such a thunder-bolt of a threat. But young Pitt-Palmer, with his

cold, clean-cut, classical face, rose to his feet with the coffee

cup in his hand and said in the coolest way:

“‘Awfully sorry; but I do hate letting my coffee get cold.’

“And he drained his cup; and, as God sees me, his face turned black

or a blend of dreadful colours; and after horrible and inhuman

noises, he fell down as in a fit before our eyes.

“Of course, we were not certain at first. But the Hungarian

scientist had a doctor’s degree; and what he reported was confirmed

by the local doctor, who was sent for at once. There was no doubt

that he was dead.”

“You mean,” said Wotton, “that the doctors agreed that he was

poisoned?”

Gahagan shook his head and repeated: “I said they agreed that he

was dead.”

“But why should he be dead unless he was poisoned?”

“He was choked,” said Gahagan; and for one instant a shudder caught

his whole powerful frame.

After a silence that seemed suddenly imposed by his agitation,

Wotton said at last:

“I don’t understand a word you say. Who poisoned the coffee?”

“Nobody poisoned the coffee; because it wasn’t poisoned,” answered

Gahagan. “The only reason for saying that was to make sure the

coffee should remain in the cup, to be analysed just as it was.

Poor Pitt-Palmer had put in a very large lump of sugar just before;

but the sugar would melt. Some things do not melt.”

Sir Hubert Wotton stared for some seconds into vacancy; and then

his eyes began to glow with his own very real though not very rapid

intelligence.

“You mean,” he said, “that Pitt-Palmer somehow dropped the ring

into the black coffee, where it wouldn’t be seen, before he was

searched. In other words, Pitt-Palmer was the thief?”

“Pitt-Palmer is dead,” said Gahagan very gravely, “and it is the

more my duty to defend his memory. What he did was doubtless

wrong, as I have come to see more clearly than I did; but not worse

than many a man has done. You may say what you like about that

very common sort of wrong-doing. But he was not a thief.”

“Will you or will you not explain what all this means?” cried

Wotton with abrupt annoyance.

“No,” replied Gahagan, with a sudden air of relapsing into laziness

and fatigue. “Mr. Pond will now oblige.”

“Pond wasn’t there, was he?” asked Wotton sharply.

“Oh, no,” answered Gahagan, rather with the air of one about to go

to sleep. “But I can see by his eyebrows that he knows all about

it. Besides, it’s somebody else’s turn.”

He closed his eyes with so hopeless a placidity that the baffled

Wotton was forced to turn on the third party, rather like a

bewildered bull.

“Do you really know anything about this?” he demanded. “What does

he mean by saying that the man who hid the ring wasn’t a thief?”

“Well, perhaps I can guess a little,” said Mr. Pond modestly. “But

that’s only because I’ve kept in mind what we said at the beginning—

about the misleading way in which things remind us of romantic

things; only they are never rounded off like the romance. You see,

the trouble is that, when a real event reminds us of a novel, we

unconsciously think we know all about it, because we know all about

the novel. We have got into a groove or rut of familiar fiction;

and we can’t help thinking the groove runs forward and backward as

it does in fiction. We’ve got the whole background of the story at

the back of our minds; and we can’t believe that we’re really in

another story. We always assume something that is assumed in the

fictional story; and it isn’t true. Once assume the wrong

beginning, and you’ll not only give the wrong answer but you ask

the wrong question. In this case, you’ve got a mystery; but you’ve

got hold of the wrong mystery.”

“Gahagan said you would explain everything,” said Wotton, with

controlled satire. “May I ask if this is the explanation? Is this

the solution or the mystery?”

“The real mystery of the ring,” said Pond gravely, “is not where it

went to, but where it came from.”

Wotton stared at him steadily for an instant, and then said in

rather a new voice: “Go on.”

Mr. Pond went on. “Gahagan has said very truly that poor Pitt-

Palmer was not the thief. Pitt-Palmer did not steal the ring.”

“Then,” exploded Wotton, “who the devil was it who stole the ring?”

“Lord Crome stole the ring,” said Mr. Pond.

There was a silence upon the whole group for a brief space; and

then the somnolent Gahagan stirred and said: “I knew you would see

the point.”

By way of making things clearer, Mr. Pond added almost

apologetically:

“But, you see, he had to hand it round, to find out whom he had

stolen it from.”

After a moment he resumed in his usual logical but laborious

manner: “Don’t you see, as I said, you assume something at the

start, simply because it is in all the stories? You assume that

when a host hands round something at dinner, it’s something

belonging to him and his household, probably an old family

possession; because that is in all the stories. But Lord Crome

meant something much blacker and bitterer than that when he said,

with a dreadful irony, that it commemorated a romance in his

family.

“Lord Crome had stolen that ring by intercepting correspondence;

or, in other words, tearing open an envelope addressed to his wife

and containing nothing but the ring. The address was typewritten;

nor indeed did he know all the handwritings involved. But he knew

the very ancient writing engraved on that ring; which was such that

it could only have been given with one purpose. He assembled those

men to find out who was the sender; or, in other words, who was the

owner. He knew the owner would somehow attempt to reclaim his

possession, if he possibly could; to stop the scandal and remove

the evidence. And indeed the man who did so, though he might be a

blackguard, would certainly not be a thief. As a matter of fact,

una minaccia simile a un fulmine. Ma il giovane Pitt-Palmer, col suo

volto freddo, netto, classico, si alzò in piedi con la tazza di

caffè in mano e disse nel modo più tranquillo del mondo:

«“Terribilmente spiacente; ma detesto proprio lasciar raffreddare il caffè.”

“E vuotò la tazza; e, com’è vero Dio, il suo volto divenne nero,

o un miscuglio di colori spaventosi; e dopo suoni orribili e disumani

cadde a terra come in preda a un attacco, sotto i nostri occhi.

“Naturalmente, dapprima non eravamo certi. Ma lo scienziato

ungherese aveva una laurea in medicina; e ciò che riferì fu confermato

dal medico locale, che venne chiamato all’istante. Non c’era dubbio

che fosse morto.”

“Vuoi dire,” disse Wotton, “che i medici erano d’accordo che fosse

avvelenato?”

Gahagan scosse il capo e ripeté: “Ho detto che erano d’accordo che

fosse morto.”

“Ma perché mai dovrebbe essere morto se non fu avvelenato?”

“Fu soffocato,” disse Gahagan; e per un istante un brivido percorse

tutta la sua possente corporatura.

Dopo un silenzio che parve imposto d’improvviso dalla sua agitazione,

Wotton disse infine:

“Non capisco una parola di ciò che dici. Chi avvelenò il caffè?”

“Nessuno avvelenò il caffè; perché non era avvelenato,” rispose

Gahagan. “L’unica ragione per dirlo era assicurarsi che il

caffè restasse nella tazza, per essere analizzato così com’era.

Il povero Pitt-Palmer vi aveva messo una grossissima zolletta di zucchero poco prima;

ma lo zucchero si sarebbe sciolto. Certe cose non si sciolgono.”

Sir Hubert Wotton fissò per alcuni secondi il vuoto; e poi

i suoi occhi cominciarono a brillare della sua intelligenza autentica

benché non molto rapida.

“Vuoi dire,” disse, “che Pitt-Palmer in qualche modo lasciò cadere l’anello

nel caffè nero, dove non si sarebbe visto, prima di essere

perquisito. In altre parole, Pitt-Palmer era il ladro?”

“Pitt-Palmer è morto,” disse Gahagan con grande gravità, “ed è

tanto più mio dovere difenderne la memoria. Ciò che fece fu senza dubbio

sbagliato, come ho finito per vedere più chiaramente di prima; ma non peggio

di quanto abbia fatto più d’un uomo. Puoi dire ciò che vuoi di quella

specie molto comune di malefatta. Ma non era un ladro.”

“Vuoi o non vuoi spiegare che cosa significa tutto questo?” gridò

Wotton con brusca irritazione.

“No,” replicò Gahagan, con un’aria improvvisa di ricaduta nella pigrizia

e nella stanchezza. “Ora ci penserà il signor Pond.”

“Pond non era là, vero?” chiese Wotton bruscamente.

“Oh, no,” rispose Gahagan, piuttosto con l’aria di chi sta per

addormentarsi. “Ma vedo dalle sue sopracciglia che sa tutto

della faccenda. E poi, è il turno di qualcun altro.”

Chiuse gli occhi con una placidità tanto disperante che lo sconcertato

Wotton fu costretto a rivolgersi al terzo presente, un po’ come un

toro smarrito.

“Ne sai davvero qualcosa?” domandò. “Che cosa

intende dire quando afferma che l’uomo che nascose l’anello non era un ladro?”

“Beh, forse posso indovinare qualcosa,” disse modestamente il signor Pond. “Ma

solo perché ho tenuto a mente ciò che abbiamo detto all’inizio—

sul modo ingannevole in cui le cose ci rammentano cose

romanzesche; solo che non si concludono mai rotonde come nel romanzo. Vedete,

il guaio è che, quando un fatto reale ci ricorda un romanzo, noi

inconsciamente crediamo di saperne tutto, perché sappiamo tutto

del romanzo. Siamo entrati in un solco o in un binario di finzione familiare;

e non possiamo fare a meno di pensare che il solco corra avanti e indietro come

fa nella finzione. Abbiamo l’intero sfondo della storia sul

fondo della mente; e non riusciamo a credere di essere davvero in

un’altra storia. Diamo sempre per scontato qualcosa che è dato per scontato nella

storia inventata; e non è vero. Una volta assunto l’inizio

sbagliato, non solo darai la risposta sbagliata, ma porrai

la domanda sbagliata. In questo caso, avete un mistero; ma avete

afferrato il mistero sbagliato.”

“Gahagan ha detto che avreste spiegato tutto,” disse Wotton, con

ironia controllata. “Posso chiedere se questa è la spiegazione? È questa

la soluzione o il mistero?”

“Il vero mistero dell’anello,” disse Pond gravemente, “non è dove

andò a finire, ma da dove venne.”

Wotton lo fissò fermamente per un istante, e poi disse con

una voce piuttosto nuova: “Continua.”

Il signor Pond continuò. “Gahagan ha detto verissimamente che il povero Pitt-

Palmer non era il ladro. Pitt-Palmer non rubò l’anello.”

“Allora,” esplose Wotton, “chi diavolo fu a rubare l’anello?”

“Lord Crome rubò l’anello,” disse il signor Pond.

Ci fu un silenzio su tutto il gruppo per un breve spazio; e

poi il sonnolento Gahagan si mosse e disse: “Sapevo che avresti colto

il punto.”

Per rendere le cose più chiare, il signor Pond aggiunse quasi

in tono di scusa:

“Ma, vedete, dovette farlo girare per scoprire da chi

l’avesse rubato.”

Dopo un momento riprese nel suo consueto modo logico ma laborioso:

“Non vedete, come ho detto, che assumete qualcosa in

partenza, semplicemente perché sta in tutte le storie? Assumete che

quando un padrone di casa fa girare qualcosa a cena, sia qualcosa

che appartiene a lui e alla sua famiglia, probabilmente un vecchio

bene di famiglia; perché così è in tutte le storie. Ma Lord Crome

intendeva qualcosa di ben più nero e amaro di questo quando disse,

con una spaventosa ironia, che commemorava un romanzo della sua

famiglia.

“Lord Crome aveva rubato quell’anello intercettando la corrispondenza;

o, in altre parole, aprendo una busta indirizzata alla moglie

e contenente null’altro che l’anello. L’indirizzo era dattiloscritto;

né in verità conosceva tutte le grafie coinvolte. Ma conosceva

l’antichissima scritta incisa su quell’anello; la quale era tale

che poteva essere stata donata con un solo scopo. Radunò quegli

uomini per scoprire chi fosse il mittente; o, in altre parole, chi fosse il

proprietario. Sapeva che il proprietario avrebbe in qualche modo tentato di riprendersi il

suo bene, se solo avesse potuto; per fermare lo scandalo e togliere di mezzo

la prova. E in effetti l’uomo che lo fece, per quanto potesse essere un

mascalzone, non sarebbe certo stato un ladro. In verità,

after a heathen fashion, he was a bit of a hero. Perhaps it was

not for nothing that he had that cold, strong face that is the

stone mask of Augustus. He took, first of all, the simple but

sensible course of slipping the ring into his black coffee, under

cover of a gesture of taking sugar. There it would not be seen,

for the moment, anyhow; and he could safely offer himself to be

searched. That demented moment, which really seemed to turn the

whole thing into a frightful dream, when Crome screamed out that

the coffee was poisoned, was only Crome’s desperate counterstroke

when he had guessed the trick; to make sure that the coffee should

be left alone and the ring recovered. But that young man with the

cold face preferred to die in that dreadful fashion: by swallowing

the heavy ring and choking; on the chance that his secret, or

rather Lady Crome’s secret, might yet be overlooked. It was a

desperate chance, anyway; but of all the courses open to him, that

being his object, it was probably the best he could have taken. In

any case, I feel that we must all support Gahagan in saying, very

properly, that the poor fellow’s memory should be protected from

any baser suggestions, and that a gentleman is certainly not a

robber when he prefers to choke himself with his own ring.”

Mr. Pond coughed delicately, having brought his argument to a

close; and Sir Hubert Wotton remained staring at him, rather more

bewildered by the solution than by the problem. When he rose

slowly to his feet, it was with the air of one shaking off

something that was still an evil dream, even when he knew that it

had happened.

“Well, I’ve got to be going, anyhow,” he said, with an air of heavy

relief. “Got to look in at Whitehall and I fancy I’m late already.

By the way, if what you say is true, this must have happened very

lately. So far as I know, the news of Pitt-Palmer’s suicide hasn’t

come through yet—at least it hadn’t come through this morning.”

“It happened last night,” said Gahagan, and rose from the chair

where he had been sprawling, to take leave of his friend.

When Wotton had departed, a long silence fell upon the two other

friends who remained looking gravely at each other.

“It happened last night,” repeated Gahagan. “That is why I told

you it had something to do with what happened this morning. I got

engaged to Joan Varney this morning.”

“Yes,” said Mr. Pond gently. “I think I understand.”

“Yes, I think you do,” said Gahagan, “but I am going to try to

explain, for all that. Do you know there was one thing almost more

awful than that poor fellow’s death? And it only hit me when I was

half a mile from that accursed house. I knew why I had been one of

the guests.”

He was standing and staring out of the window, with his broad back

turned to Pond; and after the last words he was silent and

continued to stare at the stormy landscape outside. Perhaps

something in it stirred another memory, for when he spoke again, it

was as if he started a new subject, though it was another aspect of

the same one.

“I didn’t tell you anything much about the sort of garden party,

with cocktails, that they had that afternoon before the dinner,

because I felt that until one realized the climax, one couldn’t

realize anything; it would all sound like vapouring about the

weather. But it was rather rum sort of weather yesterday, as it

still is; only it was stormier, and I think the storm has passed

over now. And it was a rum sort of atmosphere, too; though the

weather was only a coincidence, of course, it does sometimes happen

that meteorological conditions make men more conscious of moral

conditions. There was a queer, lurid sort of sky over the garden,

though there was a fair amount of fitful sunshine almost as

capricious as lightning. A huge great mountain of cloud, coloured

like ink and indigo, was coming up behind the pale, pillared façade

of the house, which was still in a wan flush of light; and I

remember even then being chilled by a childish fancy that Pitt-

Palmer was a pale marble statue and part of the building. But

there was little else to give any hint of the secret; nobody could

say that Lady Crome was like a statue; for she went flying and

flaunting about like a bird of paradise. But, whether you believe

it or not, I did from the first feel an oppression, both physical

and psychical; especially psychical. It increased when we went

indoors and the dining-room curtains cut us off from any actual

sight of the storm. They were old-fashioned, dark-red curtains,

with heavy, gilded tassels; and it was as if everything was steeped

in the same dye. You’ve heard of a man seeing red; well, what I

saw was dark red. That’s as near as I can get to the feeling; for

it was a feeling from the first; and I guessed nothing.

“And then that sinister and revolting thing happened before my eyes

at the table; I can see the dark red wine in the port decanters and

the dull glow of the lampshades. And still it seemed as if I were

invisible and impersonal; I was hardly conscious of myself. Of

course, we all had to answer some questions about ourselves; but I

need not tell you about the trail of official fussing that crossed

the track of the tragedy. It did not take long, since it was so

obviously a case of suicide; and the party broke up, straggling out

into the stormy night through the garden. As they passed out, they

seemed to have taken on new shapes, new outlines. Between the hot

night and the horrible death and that foul fog of throttling hatred

in which we had tried to breathe, I began to see something else

about them; perhaps to see them as they were. They were no longer

incongruous but grotesquely congruous; as in a hideous camaraderie.

Of course, this was a mood, and a morbid one; they really had been

different enough; but they had something in common.

“I liked the Pole best; he had a sense of humour, and admirable

manners; but I knew what he meant when he so courteously declined

the position of Pope, because it would involve celibacy. Crome

knew it too, and grinned back at him like a demon. The other one I

liked was Major Wooster, the Anglo-Indian; but something told me

that he was really of the jungle; a shikar not only hunting tigers,

a tiger not only hunting deer. Then there was the titled doctor

with the Assyrian brows and beard; I bet he was more Semitic than

Magyar. But anyhow, he had thick lips in his thick beard, and a

look in his almond eyes that I did not like at all. One of the

worst of them, I should say. I wouldn’t say anything worse of

Blande than that he’s probably too stupid to understand anything

but his own body. He hasn’t enough mind to know that he has a

mind. We all know Sir Oscar Marvell; I remember him marching out,

his furred cloak flapping as if it trailed behind it infinite

echoes of the harmless applause of flappers—but of more foolish

women as well. As to the Italian tenor, he was uncommonly like the

English actor. One could not say any worse of him than that.

“Yes; they were, after all, a very select company. They were

selected by a clever if nearly crazy man as being the six men in

London most likely to lay a plot to seduce his wife. Then, with a

great shock, I quite literally came to myself. I actually realized

my own presence. I was there, too. Crome had made up a choice

party of profligates and picked them carefully. And he had

honoured ME with an invitation to the feast.

“That was what I was. That, at least, was what I was supposed to

be. A damned dandy and dawdling blackguard, always dangling after

other men’s wives… . You know, Pond, that I was not really so

bad as all that; but then, perhaps, neither were they. We were all

innocent in this case; and yet the thundercloud upon the garden

rested on us like a judgment. So was I innocent, in that case you

remember, when I nearly got hanged for hanging round a woman I

really didn’t care about. But it served us right; it was our

atmosphere that was all wrong—what quaint old people used to call

the state of our souls, what the unspeakable bounders in the papers

call sex-appeal. That was why I nearly got hanged; and why there

was a corpse in the house behind me. And there went through my

head like the tramp of armies, old lines written long ago, about

what is in legend the noblest of all lawless loves, when Guinevere,

refusing Lancelot at the last, says in words that had for me a ring

of iron:

“For well ye wot that of this life

There comes but lewd and bitter strife

And death of men and great travail.

“I had hung round all that sort of thing, and yet never quite

clearly seen myself doing it; till two judgments struck me like the

storm out of the sky. I nearly received a sentence from a judge in

a black cap and blood-red robes, that I should be hanged by the

neck until I was dead. And, worse still, I received an invitation

from Lord Crome.”

He continued to gaze out of the window; but Pond heard him mutter

again, like the faint grumbling of the thunder: “And death of men

and great travail.”

In the vast silence that followed, Mr. Pond said in a very small

voice:

“What was the matter with you was that you liked being libelled.”

Gahagan faced about, almost with the gesture of throwing up his

hands, which seemed to fill the frame of the window with his own

gigantic frame; but he was noticeably pale.

“Kamerad, yes,” he said. “I was as small as that.”

He smiled at his friend, but with a glassy and rather ghastly

smile, and then went on:

“Yes; I cared more for that dirty rag of vanity, worse than any

vice, than I did for any vices. How many men have sold their souls

to be admired by fools? I nearly did it, merely to be suspected by

fools. To be the dangerous man, the dark horse, the man of whom

families should be afraid—that is the sort of abject ambition for

which I wasted so much of my life, and nearly lost the fulfilment

of my love. I dawdled, I lounged about, because I could not give

up a bad name. And, by God, it nearly hanged the dog.”

“That is what I supposed,” said Mr. Pond in his most prime and

polite manner. And then Gahagan broke out again:

“I was better than I seemed. But what did that mean, except the

spiritual blasphemy that I wanted to seem worse than I was? What

could it mean, except that, far worse than one who practised vice,

I admired it? Yes, admired it in myself; even when it wasn’t

there. I was the new hypocrite; but mine was the homage that

virtue pays to vice.”

“I understand, however,” said Mr. Pond, in that curiously cold and

distant tone, which had yet a very soothing effect on everybody,

“that you are now effectually cured.”

“I am cured,” said Gahagan grimly. “But it took two dead men and a

gallows to cure me. But the point is, what was I cured of? You

have diagnosed it exactly right, my dear doctor, if I may call you

so. I could not give up the secret pleasure of being slandered.”

“By this time, however,” said Mr. Pond, “other considerations have

come in and induced you to support the insupportable charge of

virtue.”

Gahagan suddenly laughed, harshly and yet, somehow, heartily. Some

would count his first comment a peculiar extension of the laugh.

“I went to confession and the rest of it this morning,” he said,

“and in a vaguer sort of way I’ve come to confession to you. To

confess that I didn’t kill the man. To confess that I never made

love to the man’s wife. In short, to confess that I was a humbug.

Certo, era un umore, e per giunta morboso; erano davvero stati

abbastanza diversi; ma avevano qualcosa in comune.

“Il polacco era quello che mi piaceva di più; aveva senso dell’umorismo, e modi

ammirevoli; ma capii che cosa intendesse quando declinò così

cortesemente la carica di Papa, perché avrebbe comportato il celibato. Crome

lo capì anche lui, e gli ghignò di rimando come un demonio. L’altro che mi

piaceva era il maggiore Wooster, l’anglo-indiano; ma qualcosa mi diceva

che era davvero della giungla; uno shikar non solo a caccia di tigri,

una tigre non solo a caccia di cervi. Poi c’era il medico titolato

con le sopracciglia e la barba assire; scommetto che era più semita che

magiaro. Ma comunque, aveva labbra grosse nella sua barba folta, e uno

sguardo nei suoi occhi a mandorla che non mi piaceva affatto. Uno dei

peggiori di loro, direi. Di Blande non saprei dire di peggio

se non che è probabilmente troppo stupido per capire qualcosa che non sia

il suo stesso corpo. Non ha mente abbastanza per sapere di avere una

mente. Conosciamo tutti Sir Oscar Marvell; lo ricordo mentre usciva a passo di marcia,

il mantello foderato che sventolava come se si trascinasse dietro infiniti

echi degli innocui applausi delle svampite—ma di donne più sciocche

del pari. Quanto al tenore italiano, somigliava straordinariamente all’attore

inglese. Non si potrebbe dire nulla di peggio di lui.

“Sì; erano, dopo tutto, una compagnia molto scelta. Erano

stati scelti da un uomo abile benché quasi pazzo come i sei uomini di

Londra più propensi a ordire un intrigo per sedurgli la moglie. Poi, con

un grande sussulto, tornai letteralmente in me. Mi resi davvero conto

della mia stessa presenza. C’ero anch’io. Crome aveva radunato una scelta

comitiva di libertini e li aveva scelti con cura. E mi aveva

onorato ME di un invito al banchetto.

“Ecco che cos’ero. Quello, almeno, era ciò che si supponeva che

fossi. Un dannato damerino e un mascalzone bighellone, sempre appresso

alle mogli altrui… . Sai, Pond, che non ero davvero così

malvagio come tutto ciò; ma allora, forse, non lo erano neanche loro. Eravamo tutti

innocenti in quel caso; eppure il nembo temporalesco sul giardino

gravava su di noi come un giudizio. Così ero innocente, in quel caso che tu

ricordi, quando per poco non fui impiccato per aver gironzolato attorno a una donna che

in realtà non mi importava affatto. Ma ci stava bene; era la

nostra atmosfera a essere tutta sbagliata—ciò che i bizzarri antichi chiamavano

lo stato delle nostre anime, ciò che gli indicibili cafoni dei giornali

chiamano attrazione sessuale. Ecco perché per poco non fui impiccato; e perché c’era

un cadavere nella casa alle mie spalle. E mi passarono per

la testa come il calpestio di eserciti, vecchi versi scritti tanto tempo fa, su

quello che nella leggenda è il più nobile di tutti gli amori illeciti, quando Ginevra,

rifiutando Lancillotto all’ultimo, dice in parole che per me avevano un tintinnio

di ferro:

“Ché ben tu sai che di questa vita

null’altro viene che rissa turpe e amara

e morte d’uomini e grande travaglio.

“Avevo gironzolato attorno a tutte quelle cose, e pure non mi ero mai

visto chiaramente farlo; finché due giudizi mi colpirono come la

tempesta scesa dal cielo. Per poco non ricevetti una sentenza da un giudice in

berretto nero e vesti rosso sangue, che dovessi essere impiccato per il

collo fino alla morte. E, peggio ancora, ricevetti un invito

da Lord Crome.”

Continuò a guardare fuori dalla finestra; ma Pond lo udì mormorare

di nuovo, come il fioco brontolio del tuono: “E morte d’uomini

e grande travaglio.”

Nel vasto silenzio che seguì, il signor Pond disse con una vocina

piccolissima:

“Il tuo guaio era che ti piaceva essere calunniato.”

Gahagan si voltò, quasi col gesto di gettare in aria le

mani, che parvero riempire il vano della finestra con la sua stessa

gigantesca corporatura; ma era notevolmente pallido.

“Kamerad, sì,” disse. “Ero così meschino.”

Sorrise all’amico, ma con un sorriso vitreo e piuttosto

spettrale, e poi proseguì:

“Sì; tenevo di più a quel lercio straccio di vanità, peggiore di ogni

vizio, di quanto tenessi a qualsiasi vizio. Quanti uomini hanno venduto l’anima

per essere ammirati dagli sciocchi? Io per poco non lo feci, solo per essere sospettato dagli

sciocchi. Essere l’uomo pericoloso, il cavallo nero, l’uomo di cui

le famiglie dovrebbero avere paura—ecco la specie di abietta ambizione per

la quale sprecai tanta parte della mia vita, e per poco non persi il compimento

del mio amore. Bighellonai, gironzolai, perché non riuscivo a rinunciare

a una cattiva fama. E, per Dio, quel cane per poco non finì impiccato.”

“Questo è ciò che supponevo,” disse il signor Pond nel suo modo più compito e

cortese. E allora Gahagan proruppe di nuovo:

“Ero migliore di quanto sembrassi. Ma che cosa significava questo, se non la

bestemmia spirituale che volevo sembrare peggiore di quanto fossi? Che cosa

poteva significare, se non che, assai peggio di chi praticava il vizio,

io lo ammiravo? Sì, lo ammiravo in me stesso; anche quando non c’era

affatto. Ero il nuovo ipocrita; ma il mio era l’omaggio che

la virtù rende al vizio.”

“Capisco, però,” disse il signor Pond, in quel tono curiosamente freddo e

distante, che aveva pure un effetto molto rasserenante su tutti,

“che ora sei effettivamente guarito.”

“Sono guarito,” disse Gahagan cupamente. “Ma ci vollero due morti e una

forca per guarirmi. Ma il punto è: da che cosa fui guarito? Hai

diagnosticato esattamente, mio caro dottore, se posso chiamarti

così. Non riuscivo a rinunciare al segreto piacere di essere calunniato.”

“A quest’ora, tuttavia,” disse il signor Pond, “altre considerazioni sono

entrate in gioco e ti hanno indotto a sostenere l’insostenibile accusa di

virtù.”

Gahagan rise d’improvviso, aspramente e pure, in qualche modo, di cuore. Alcuni

giudicherebbero il suo primo commento una peculiare estensione della risata.

“Sono andato a confessarmi e a tutto il resto stamattina,” disse,

“e in modo più vago mi sono venuto a confessare a te. A

confessare che non uccisi l’uomo. A confessare che non feci mai la

corte alla moglie dell’uomo. Insomma, a confessare che ero un impostore.

To confess that I am not a dangerous man … well, anyhow, after

I’d done all that, I went on whistling, and as happy as a bird, to—

well, I think you know where I went to. There’s a girl I ought to

have fixed things up with long ago; and I always wanted to do it;

that’s the paradox. But a damned sight sillier paradox than any of

your paradoxes, Pond.”

Mr. Pond laughed gently, as he generally did when somebody had told

him, at considerable length, all that he knew already. And he was

not so old, nor despite his manner so cold, as not to form some

sort of guess about the actual termination of the rather

exasperating romance of Captain Gahagan.

This story started with some statements about the way in which

stories tend to get into a tangle, one tale being mixed up with

another tale, especially when they are true tales. This story also

started, and ought also presumably to stop, with the very

extraordinary tragedy and scandal in the house of Lord Crome, when

that promising young politician, Mr. Pitt-Palmer, unaccountably

tumbled down dead. It ought really to end with a proper account of

his impressive public funeral; of the chorus of praise devoted to

him in the Press; and the stately compliments laid on his tomb like

flowers from the leaders of all the parties in Parliament; from

those eloquent words of the Leader of the Opposition beginning

“Much as we may have differed in politics,” to those (if possible)

still more eloquent observations of the Leader of the House,

beginning “Confident as I am that our cause is independent even of

the noblest personality, I yet have to lament, etc.”

Anyhow, it is really very irrelevant to the central plot of this

story that it should stray from the funeral of Pitt-Palmer to the

wedding of Gahagan. It will be enough to say that, as already

hinted, the actual effect of this shocking incident on Gahagan was

to drive him back to an old love; an old love who was still

conveniently young. A certain Miss Violet Varney was at that time

prominent on the stage; the word “prominent” has been selected with

some care from other possible adjectives. In the general view of

society, Miss Joan Varney was the sister of Miss Violet Varney. In

the perverse and personal view of Captain Gahagan, Miss Violet

Varney was the sister of Miss Joan Varney; nor was he eager to

insist on this relationship. He loved Joan but he did not even

like Violet; but there is no need to enter on the entanglements of

that other story here. Are not all these things written in the

Chronicles of the Kings of Israel?

It is enough to say that on that particular morning, swept clear

and shining after the storm, Captain Gahagan came out of the church

in the little by-street and very cheerfully took the road to the

house of the Varney family, where he found Miss Joan Varney

pottering about in the garden with a spud, and told her several

things of some importance to both of them. When Miss Violet Varney

heard that her younger sister was engaged to Captain Gahagan, she

went off with admirable promptitude to a theatrical club and got

engaged to one of the numerous noodles of more or less noble birth

who could be used for the purpose. She very sensibly broke off

this engagement about a month afterwards; but she got HER

engagement into the society papers first.

THE TERRIBLE TROUBADOUR

“In nature you must go very low to find things that go so high.”

This was commonly included by collectors among the Paradoxes of Mr.

Pond; for it came towards the end of a rather dull and eminently

sensible discourse, and it made no sense. And these were

recognized as the stigmata of the stylistic methods of Mr. Pond.

But in this case, as a fact, he had plagiarized from his old

acquaintance Dr. Paul Green, author of The Dog or the Monkey,

Studies in the Domestication of Anthropoids, Notes on Neanderthal

Development, etc., etc.

Dr. Paul Green was a smallish man, pale, slender and slightly lame;

but his activity, even in bodily movement, was relatively

remarkable, and his mind moved as quickly as a quick-firing gun.

It was this old acquaintance who, on one sunny afternoon, came out

of Mr. Pond’s past to bring him shocking and even nerve-shattering

news; a report as alarming as the report of a gun.

But when Mr. Pond was told, on such very solid authority, that his

friend Captain Gahagan was an escaped murderer, after all, he said,

“Tut, tut.” He was given to what is called understatement; of

which he knew the Greek name, but did not employ it needlessly.

The conversation, indeed, had opened casually enough, turning from

the doctor’s health to the doctor’s hobby of studying animal

habits. A little light talk about Eohippus; some airy badinage

about Homo Kanensis; a little bright back-chat about Vialleton’s

Études sur les Reflexes des Animaux Tétrapodes; rising to a certain

sharpness of dialogue, for on this point of Darwin and Natural

Selection the two friends had never agreed.

“I never can see,” said Mr. Pond, “how a change, that might have

helped an animal if it came quickly, could have helped him if it

came slowly. And came to his great-grandchild, long after he ought

to have perished without leaving any grandchildren. It might be

better if I had three legs, say, in order to stand firmly on two

while kicking a fellow bureaucrat with the third. It might be

better if I had three legs; but it wouldn’t be better if I only had

a rudimentary leg.”

“It might be better if I had two legs,” said the doctor grimly,

“instead of one lame leg that is hardly a leg at all. And yet I

find it fairly useful.”

Mr. Pond, who was commonly very tactful, chid himself softly for

tactlessness in forgetting that his old acquaintance was lame.

But, at least, he was far too tactful to apologize, or even too

Confessare che non sono un uomo pericoloso … Beh, comunque, dopo

aver fatto tutto ciò, me ne andai fischiettando, e felice come un uccellino, verso—

beh, credo che tu sappia dove andai. C’è una ragazza con cui avrei

dovuto sistemare le cose molto tempo fa; e ho sempre voluto farlo;

questo è il paradosso. Ma un paradosso dannatamente più sciocco di qualunque

dei tuoi paradossi, Pond.”

Il signor Pond rise gentilmente, come faceva di solito quando qualcuno gli aveva

raccontato, con notevole ampiezza, tutto ciò che egli già sapeva. E non era

così vecchio, né malgrado i suoi modi così freddo, da non farsi qualche

sorta di congettura sull’effettiva conclusione del piuttosto

esasperante romanzo del capitano Gahagan.

Questa storia cominciò con alcune affermazioni sul modo in cui

le storie tendono a ingarbugliarsi, un racconto mescolandosi con

un altro racconto, specialmente quando sono racconti veri. Questa storia cominciò

anche, e dovrebbe presumibilmente anche fermarsi, con la

straordinarissima tragedia e lo scandalo nella casa di Lord Crome, quando

quel promettente giovane politico, il signor Pitt-Palmer, cadde giù

morto in modo inspiegabile. Dovrebbe davvero terminare con un debito resoconto

del suo imponente funerale pubblico; del coro di lodi a lui

dedicate dalla stampa; e dei solenni complimenti deposti sulla sua tomba come

fiori dai capi di tutti i partiti in Parlamento; da

quelle eloquenti parole del capo dell’opposizione che cominciavano

“Per quanto possiamo aver dissentito in politica,” fino a quelle (se possibile)

ancor più eloquenti osservazioni del capo della Camera,

che cominciavano “Certo come sono che la nostra causa è indipendente perfino

dalla più nobile personalità, devo pur deplorare, eccetera.”

Comunque, è davvero molto irrilevante rispetto alla trama centrale di questa

storia che essa vaghi dal funerale di Pitt-Palmer alle

nozze di Gahagan. Basterà dire che, come già

accennato, l’effetto reale di questo sconvolgente incidente su Gahagan fu

di ricacciarlo verso un vecchio amore; un vecchio amore che era ancora

convenientemente giovane. Una certa signorina Violet Varney era a quel tempo

di spicco sulla scena; la parola “di spicco” è stata scelta con

una certa cura tra altri aggettivi possibili. Nella visione generale della

società, la signorina Joan Varney era la sorella della signorina Violet Varney. Nella

visione perversa e personale del capitano Gahagan, la signorina Violet

Varney era la sorella della signorina Joan Varney; né egli era ansioso di

insistere su questa parentela. Amava Joan ma non gli piaceva nemmeno

Violet; ma non c’è bisogno di entrare qui negli intrichi di

quell’altra storia. Non sono forse tutte queste cose scritte nelle

Cronache dei Re d’Israele?

Basti dire che quella particolare mattina, spazzata limpida

e splendente dopo la tempesta, il capitano Gahagan uscì dalla chiesa

nella stradina laterale e, molto allegramente, prese la strada verso la

casa della famiglia Varney, dove trovò la signorina Joan Varney

che gironzolava nel giardino con una zappetta, e le disse parecchie

cose di una certa importanza per entrambi. Quando la signorina Violet Varney

seppe che la sorella minore era fidanzata col capitano Gahagan,

corse via con ammirevole prontezza a un club teatrale e si

fidanzò con uno dei numerosi sciocchi di natali più o meno nobili

che potevano servire allo scopo. Ruppe molto sensatamente

questo fidanzamento circa un mese dopo; ma fece finire prima IL SUO

fidanzamento sui giornali mondani.

IL TERRIBILE TROVATORE

“In natura devi scendere molto in basso per trovare cose che salgono così in alto.”

Questa era comunemente inclusa dai collezionisti tra i Paradossi del signor

Pond; perché venne verso la fine di un discorso piuttosto noioso ed eminentemente

sensato, e non aveva alcun senso. E questi erano

riconosciuti come le stimmate dei metodi stilistici del signor Pond.

Ma in questo caso, di fatto, egli aveva plagiato il suo vecchio

conoscente, il dottor Paul Green, autore de Il cane o la scimmia,

Studi sulla domesticazione degli antropoidi, Note sullo sviluppo

di Neanderthal, ecc., ecc.

Il dottor Paul Green era un ometto piuttosto piccolo, pallido, esile e leggermente zoppo;

ma la sua attività, perfino nel movimento del corpo, era relativamente

notevole, e la sua mente si muoveva rapida come un cannone a tiro rapido.

Fu questo vecchio conoscente che, in un soleggiato pomeriggio, uscì

dal passato del signor Pond per portargli notizie sconvolgenti e persino

sconquassanti; un annuncio allarmante come lo sparo di un fucile.

Ma quando al signor Pond fu detto, su un’autorità tanto solida, che il suo

amico capitano Gahagan era, dopo tutto, un assassino evaso, egli disse,

“Ta, ta.” Era dedito a ciò che si chiama litote; di

cui conosceva il nome greco, ma non lo impiegava inutilmente.

La conversazione, in verità, si era aperta abbastanza casualmente, passando dalla

salute del dottore al suo passatempo di studiare le abitudini degli animali.

Un po’ di chiacchiere leggere sull’Eohippus; qualche arioso

frizzo sull’Homo Kanensis; un po’ di brillante botta e risposta sulle Études

sur les Reflexes des Animaux Tétrapodes di Vialleton; salendo a una certa

asprezza di dialogo, poiché su questo punto di Darwin e della selezione

naturale i due amici non erano mai stati d’accordo.

“Non riesco proprio a capire,” disse il signor Pond, “come un mutamento,

che avrebbe potuto aiutare un animale se fosse venuto in fretta, potesse averlo aiutato se

fosse venuto lentamente. E fosse arrivato al suo pronipote, molto dopo che egli avrebbe

dovuto perire senza lasciare alcun nipote. Potrebbe essere

meglio se io avessi tre gambe, poniamo, per stare saldamente su due

mentre prendo a calci un collega burocrate con la terza. Potrebbe essere

meglio se avessi tre gambe; ma non sarebbe meglio se avessi solo

una gamba rudimentale.”

“Potrebbe essere meglio se io avessi due gambe,” disse il dottore cupamente,

“invece di una gamba zoppa che è a stento una gamba. Eppure

la trovo abbastanza utile.”

Il signor Pond, che era di solito molto pieno di tatto, si rimproverò dolcemente

la mancanza di tatto nell’aver dimenticato che il suo vecchio conoscente era zoppo.

Ma, almeno, era troppo pieno di tatto per scusarsi, o persino troppo

obviously to change the subject.

He proceeded in his mild and fluent way: “I mean that till a leg

is long enough to run or climb, it would only be an extra weight

for the runner or climber to carry.”

“It’s pretty queer,” said the doctor, “that we should have started

off talking about running and climbing. I didn’t come here to

discuss Darwinism or anything half so sane and sensible. But if

you think I’m suspect, as the atrocious atheist, I may explain that

I don’t want you just now to listen to me, but to my friend the

vicar of Hanging Burgess, the Reverend Cyprian Whiteways, whose

views are probably quite as anti-scientific as your own. I don’t

suppose he’s a Darwinian; but, anyhow, I promised to introduce him

to you, and he wants to tell you about things that happened rather

later than the later Stone Age.”

“Then, what do you mean,” asked Pond, “by talking about running and

climbing?”

“I meant, I am sorry to say,” replied Dr. Green, “that the vicar

has a pretty bad story about that friend of yours, Captain Gahagan,

whose legs seem to be very good at climbing, and still better at

running away.”

“It’s a serious thing,” said Pond, gravely, “to accuse a soldier of

running away.”

“It’s a much more serious thing of which the vicar accuses him,”

said Green. “He accuses him of climbing a balcony and shooting a

rival, and then running away. But it’s not my story; I’m not the

story, but only the introduction.”

“Climbing a balcony,” mused Mr. Pond; “for a vicar it sounds rather

a romantic story.”

“I know,” said the doctor, “the sort of story that begins with a

rope-ladder and ends with a rope.”

Mr. Pond, as he heard the unequal step of his lame friend echoing

away down the paved paths of the garden, relapsed into a gloomy

mood. He was quite willing to accept his medical friend merely as

a letter of introduction. But it was a rather black-edged and

tragic sort of letter of introduction. Whatever story the Rev.

Cyprian was going to tell, it was another story against his

unfortunate friend Peter Gahagan. And Gahagan was so very

unfortunate as to suggest to some a wild doubt about whether he was

merely unfortunate. Some had the sudden and horrible thought that,

perhaps, he was fortunate. Twice before, he had been mixed up in

matters involving a mysterious and violent death; with, at least, a

savour of murder. In both cases he had been cleared. But three is

an unlucky number.

Finally, the Rev. Cyprian Whiteways was a shock; a shock because of

his frankness and fair-mindedness.

Mr. Pond would never, at any time, have stooped to the stupid idea

that clergymen are stupid. He did not take his ideas of real life

from farces like The Private Secretary. But the Rev. Cyprian was

so very much the reverse of stupid; a man with a rugged face like

old red sandstone; and, indeed, he suggested a rock of that rich

colouring which glows with the past; he carried his English

countryside with him in an indescribable suggestion of depth and

background; he could not talk of common things without, somehow,

suggesting the weather or the turn of night or day; he was a born

descriptive writer who only talked. But nobody could doubt that it

was truth; or, at least, truthfulness.

It was so substantial a witness who told Mr. Pond in considerable

detail the black and bloody story of Gahagan’s hidden sin. And the

curious effect of all this on Mr. Pond was to make him jump up

briskly with a broad smile of relief on his bearded and somewhat

owlish visage; declaring with unusual cheeriness that it was quite

all right, they had only to ask Gahagan himself, and he would tell

them all about it. Confrontation, it was sometimes called.

As for Dr. Green, with the letter of introduction, his job was

done, and he was somewhat impatient of Pond’s formalities; he

stumped off, merely warning the vicar that he had better have a

lawyer, if he was to confront that plausible Irish rogue.

So, when the scientist was already far away, reabsorbed in the

study of a pithecanthropos as a pet, all that remained of his

intervention was a solicitor named Luke Little, very much on the

spot.

Mr. Pond’s friend, Sir Hubert Wotton, the well-known diplomatist,

took the chair; but Mr. Little did not mind who took chairs so long

as he took charge.

“This is a very irregular inquiry, gentlemen,” he said. “Only a

special assurance would have induced me to place my client’s case

before it. Sir Hubert and Mr. Pond declare, I understand, that an

explanation will be demanded here and now.”

Then he added: “It is a painful matter, as I think Mr. Pond will

agree.”

“It is a very painful matter, indeed,” replied Pond, gravely, “that

an old friend of mine should be under suspicion of a horrible

action.”

His friend, Wotton, looked at Pond for a moment with a frosty stare

of surprise; but he stared a great deal more when he was startled

by Gahagan himself, speaking, suddenly, for the first and last time

in all the first hours of the interview.

“Yes,” he said, with a grim and inscrutable visage. “It is

certainly a horrible story.”

“In any case, then,” resumed the lawyer, “I can now ask my client,

without prejudice, to repeat the story.”

“It’s an ugly story,” said the clergyman in his honest way, “and

I’ll tell it as shortly as I can.”

Pond had heard the story, already, told in a way at once looser and

more elaborate, and allowing of more descriptive detail or

inference than the statement made under such very legal

supervision. But even as he heard it again in more exact form, he

could not get rid of a feeling that the scene described was

unnaturally vivid to him, but with the vividness of a nightmare.

There was no particular reason, at that stage, for comparing the

story to a nightmare; except that the two principal incidents

happened at night.

palesemente per cambiare argomento.

Proseguì nel suo modo mite e scorrevole: “Voglio dire che finché una gamba

non è abbastanza lunga per correre o arrampicarsi, sarebbe solo un peso in più

da portare per chi corre o si arrampica.”

“È piuttosto strano,” disse il dottore, “che abbiamo cominciato

a parlare di correre e arrampicarsi. Non sono venuto qui per

discutere di darwinismo o di alcunché di altrettanto sano e sensato.

Ma se pensi che io sia sospetto, come l’atroce ateo, posso spiegarti

che al momento non voglio che tu ascolti me, ma il mio amico

il vicario di Hanging Burgess, il reverendo Cyprian Whiteways, le cui

vedute sono probabilmente altrettanto anti-scientifiche delle tue. Non

suppongo che sia darwiniano; ma, comunque, ho promesso di presentartelo,

e vuole raccontarti di cose accadute piuttosto

più tardi della tarda Età della Pietra.”

“Allora, che cosa intendi,” chiese Pond, “col parlare di correre e

arrampicarsi?”

“Intendevo, mi dispiace dirlo,” replicò il dottor Green, “che il vicario

ha una storia piuttosto brutta su quel tuo amico, il capitano Gahagan,

le cui gambe sembrano molto brave ad arrampicarsi, e ancor più brave a

scappare.”

“È una cosa seria,” disse Pond, gravemente, “accusare un soldato di

scappare.”

“È una cosa ben più seria quella di cui il vicario lo accusa,”

disse Green. “Lo accusa di essersi arrampicato su un balcone e di aver ucciso

un rivale, e poi di essere scappato. Ma non è la mia storia; io non sono

la storia, ma solo l’introduzione.”

“Arrampicarsi su un balcone,” meditò il signor Pond; “per un vicario suona

una storia piuttosto romantica.”

“Lo so,” disse il dottore, “il genere di storia che comincia con una

scala di corda e finisce con una corda.”

Il signor Pond, mentre udiva il passo ineguale del suo amico zoppo echeggiare

lungo i sentieri lastricati del giardino, ricadde in un umore

cupo. Era del tutto disposto ad accettare l’amico medico come semplice

lettera di presentazione. Ma era una lettera di presentazione piuttosto

listata a lutto e tragica. Qualunque storia il rev.

Cyprian stesse per raccontare, era un’altra storia contro il suo

sventurato amico Peter Gahagan. E Gahagan era così

sfortunato da suggerire ad alcuni un selvaggio dubbio sul fatto che fosse

soltanto sfortunato. Alcuni ebbero l’improvviso e orribile pensiero che,

forse, fosse fortunato. Due volte prima era stato immischiato in

faccende che comportavano una misteriosa e violenta morte; con, almeno, un

sentore di omicidio. In entrambi i casi era stato scagionato. Ma tre è

un numero sfortunato.

Infine, il rev. Cyprian Whiteways fu una sorpresa; una sorpresa per la

sua franchezza e imparzialità.

Il signor Pond non si sarebbe mai, in nessun momento, abbassato alla stupida idea

che gli ecclesiastici siano stupidi. Non traeva le sue idee sulla vita reale

da farse come The Private Secretary. Ma il rev. Cyprian era

talmente il contrario di stupido; un uomo dal volto rugoso come

la vecchia arenaria rossa; e, in verità, faceva pensare a una roccia di quella ricca

colorazione che risplende del passato; portava con sé la sua

campagna inglese in un’indescrivibile suggestione di profondità e

sfondo; non poteva parlare di cose comuni senza, in qualche modo,

evocare il tempo o il volgere della notte o del giorno; era uno

scrittore descrittivo nato che si limitava a parlare. Ma nessuno poteva dubitare che fosse

verità; o, almeno, veridicità.

Fu un testimone tanto solido a raccontare al signor Pond con notevole

dettaglio la nera e sanguinosa storia del peccato nascosto di Gahagan. E il

curioso effetto di tutto ciò sul signor Pond fu di farlo balzare su

svelto con un ampio sorriso di sollievo sul volto barbuto e alquanto

civettesco; dichiarando con insolita giovialità che andava tutto

benissimo, non c’era che da chiederlo a Gahagan stesso, ed egli avrebbe

raccontato loro tutto. Confronto, lo si chiamava talvolta.

Quanto al dottor Green, con la lettera di presentazione, il suo compito era

fatto, ed era piuttosto impaziente delle formalità di Pond; se ne andò

zoppicando, limitandosi ad avvertire il vicario che avrebbe fatto meglio ad avere un

avvocato, se voleva affrontare quel plausibile briccone irlandese.

Così, quando lo scienziato era già lontano, riassorbito nello

studio di un pitecantropo come animale da compagnia, tutto ciò che restava del suo

intervento era un procuratore di nome Luke Little, molto sul

posto.

L’amico del signor Pond, Sir Hubert Wotton, il noto diplomatico,

assunse la presidenza; ma al signor Little non importava chi presiedesse, purché

fosse lui a prendere le redini.

“Questa è un’inchiesta molto irregolare, signori,” disse. “Solo una

speciale assicurazione mi avrebbe indotto a esporre il caso del mio cliente

davanti a essa. Sir Hubert e il signor Pond dichiarano, se ho ben capito, che una

spiegazione sarà richiesta qui e ora.”

Poi aggiunse: “È una faccenda penosa, come credo che il signor Pond

converrà.”

“È una faccenda molto penosa, davvero,” replicò Pond, gravemente, “che

un mio vecchio amico si trovi sotto il sospetto di un’azione

orribile.”

Il suo amico, Wotton, guardò Pond per un momento con uno sguardo gelido

di sorpresa; ma sgranò molto di più gli occhi quando fu colto di sorpresa

da Gahagan stesso, che parlava, d’improvviso, per la prima e ultima volta

in tutte le prime ore del colloquio.

“Sì,” disse, col volto arcigno e imperscrutabile. “È

certamente una storia orribile.”

“In ogni caso, allora,” riprese l’avvocato, “posso ora chiedere al mio cliente,

senza pregiudizio, di ripetere la storia.”

“È una brutta storia,” disse l’ecclesiastico nel suo modo onesto, “e

la racconterò nel modo più breve possibile.”

Pond aveva udito la storia, già, raccontata in un modo insieme più sciolto e

più elaborato, e che concedeva più dettaglio descrittivo o

deduzione della deposizione fatta sotto una tanto rigorosa

sorveglianza legale. Ma persino nel riudirla in forma più esatta,

non poteva liberarsi della sensazione che la scena descritta gli fosse

innaturalmente vivida, ma con la vividezza di un incubo.

Non c’era una ragione particolare, a quel punto, per paragonare la

storia a un incubo; se non che i due incidenti principali

accaddero di notte.

They happened in the vicar’s garden, close to the balcony of the

vicar’s house; and perhaps the impression, which was rather like an

oppression, was somehow connected with another night darkening the

night; a living night of vegetation; for it was suggested,

throughout, that the balcony was loaded with pots and palms and

clutched by climbing plants with heavy and pendent leaves.

Perhaps, after all, it was only some vague, verbal association with

the name of Hanging Burgess; as if the mystery were somehow

associated with the hanging gardens of Babylon. Perhaps, again, it

was partly the irrational trail of the talk with Dr. Green, with

his creed of blind growth and a groping life-force in a godless

dark; for Green developed his view of development with every fancy

from botany as well as biology.

On the whole, however, Mr. Pond concluded that his own queer mood

was the result of the one fact, which it had really been necessary

to describe in detail. For the vicar had been obliged to explain,

on both occasions, in order to make his tale intelligible, that the

front of the balcony was scaled from below by a titanic, tropical

creeper, with ribbed and interlaced limbs and large, fantastic

leaves. It is not altogether an exaggeration to say that the

creeper was the principal character in the story.

“This business happened during the Great War,” explained the

clergyman, “when my daughter and I were living in my house at

Hanging Burgess. But the two houses on each side of us were empty,

due to the drainage of human material common at the time. At

least, they were both empty for a considerable period, though they

were handsome houses with large gardens, sloping down to the river.

Then my friend Dr. Green came down to be my next-door neighbour and

prosecute his scientific researches in a quiet place. He was

writing a book, you know, on the domestication of animals; dogs and

cats and pet marmosets and monkeys, and so on; and my daughter, who

is interested in such pets, helped him a little with his work.

“It is a happy time to look back upon, for us who were old cronies;

perhaps because it was a quiet time.

“And then our solitude was broken, as it seemed by accident, and

all the trouble and tragedy began.

“First of all, a young artist of the name of Albert Ayres rented

the house next door, though he seemed to want it mostly for a base

in which to leave his baggage, for he was wandering over the

country making sketches; and it is only fair, as you will see

presently, to admit that he did say, once, that he would start

straight away next morning on one of his sketching tours. I mean

that we cannot, in any case, actually prove what became of him.

Unfortunately, I know only too well what became of him.

“He was an interesting individual; perhaps a little too like the

old notion of an artist; the sort one can hardly call either

carelessly or carefully picturesque; with a halo of yellow hair

which the sympathetic might connect with Galahad and the

unsympathetic with Struwwelpeter. Mind you, there was nothing

about him effeminate, and nothing false about his position in

relation to the war. He had been invalided out, and what he was

doing was a necessary job and not a funk-hole; and, at the moment,

he was enjoying a short and very well-earned holiday.

“It is only fair to Captain Gahagan to say that, even in their

subsequent quarrel, even in the last, blackest days of hatred, and,

I hope, of madness, which ended in murder, the Captain never

sneered at his rival upon that point, or assumed anything like the

swagger of khaki. But, at the time, Captain Gahagan was still in

khaki, having a very short leave from the front, which he was

supposed to spend at the neighbouring inn, but did spend mostly in

my house.

“You will understand my reluctance in speaking of the matter; the

fact that he was on short leave may have given a certain impatience

to his rather headlong courtship of my daughter, for it could be

called nothing else. Some say that women do not specially object

to that; but I would much prefer not to presume on any speculations

about that matter. But to deal entirely with the facts. They are

as follows:

“One evening, just after sunset, or about dusk, I was walking in my

garden with the doctor, and we were joined, shortly afterwards, by

Albert Ayres. I had just asked my friend Green to drop in and take

some dinner with us; but he happened to be rather exhausted with a

heavy day of his scientific work; he looked pale and tired; and he

declined in a rather distant and distracted manner. In fact, I

thought he was looking ill.”

“He has not very good health,” interposed Mr. Pond, suddenly. “He

doesn’t go about very much. You must remember he is lame.” The

others stared at him again, as if not seeing any importance in the

interruption; and again they were still more puzzled by his further

comment; for he added quite calmly:

“The clue to all this mystery is the fact that Dr. Green is lame.”

“I have not the wildest notion what you mean,” said the vicar of

Hanging Burgess briskly. “But, anyhow, I had better get on and

tell you what really happened; and you will see that it certainly

had nothing to do with either lameness or Dr. Green.

“In strolling round the garden we had paused under the giant

creeper that grows out of the flower-bed and shoots right up to the

balcony; and Ayres was just remarking on its unique strength and

luxuriousness, when we all had a sort of a shock. For we saw the

whole creeper move and twist like a monstrous serpent, in that

still garden; every limb of it heaved and writhed and the whole

framework of its foliage was shaken as by some impossibly localized

Accaddero nel giardino del vicario, vicino al balcone della

casa del vicario; e forse l’impressione, che era piuttosto simile a un’

oppressione, era in qualche modo legata a un’altra notte che oscurava la

notte; una vivente notte di vegetazione; poiché si suggeriva,

per tutto il tempo, che il balcone fosse carico di vasi e palme e

stretto da piante rampicanti dalle foglie pesanti e pendenti.

Forse, dopo tutto, non era che una vaga associazione verbale con

il nome di Hanging Burgess; come se il mistero fosse in qualche modo

associato ai giardini pensili di Babilonia. Forse, di nuovo, era

in parte la scia irrazionale del discorso col dottor Green, col

suo credo di crescita cieca e di una brancolante forza vitale in un buio

senza Dio; poiché Green sviluppava la sua visione dello sviluppo con ogni fantasia

tratta dalla botanica come pure dalla biologia.

Nel complesso, tuttavia, il signor Pond concluse che il proprio strano umore

era il risultato dell’unico fatto che era stato davvero necessario

descrivere in dettaglio. Poiché il vicario era stato costretto a spiegare,

in entrambe le occasioni, per rendere intelligibile il suo racconto, che il

fronte del balcone era scalato dal basso da un titanico, tropicale

rampicante, dalle membra nervate e intrecciate e dalle grandi, fantastiche

foglie. Non è del tutto un’esagerazione dire che il

rampicante era il personaggio principale della storia.

“Questa faccenda accadde durante la Grande Guerra,” spiegò il

sacerdote, “quando io e mia figlia vivevamo nella mia casa a

Hanging Burgess. Ma le due case ai nostri fianchi erano vuote,

per via del prosciugamento di materiale umano comune a quel tempo. Per

lo meno, erano entrambe vuote da un considerevole periodo, benché fossero

belle case con grandi giardini, che digradavano fino al fiume.

Poi il mio amico dottor Green venne a stabilirsi come mio vicino di casa e

a proseguire le sue ricerche scientifiche in un luogo tranquillo. Stava

scrivendo un libro, sai, sulla domesticazione degli animali; cani e

gatti e uistitì domestici e scimmie, e così via; e mia figlia, che

s’interessa di tali animaletti, lo aiutò un poco nel suo lavoro.

“È un tempo felice a cui ripensare, per noi che eravamo vecchi compari;

forse perché era un tempo tranquillo.

“E poi la nostra solitudine fu spezzata, come parve per caso, e

cominciarono tutti i guai e la tragedia.

“Prima di tutto, un giovane artista di nome Albert Ayres prese in affitto la

casa accanto, benché sembrasse volerla soprattutto come base

in cui lasciare i bagagli, poiché andava vagando per la

campagna a fare schizzi; ed è giusto, come vedrai

fra poco, ammettere che disse, una volta, che sarebbe partito

subito la mattina dopo per uno dei suoi giri di schizzi. Voglio dire

che non possiamo, in ogni caso, provare davvero che ne fu di lui.

Purtroppo, so fin troppo bene che ne fu di lui.

“Era un individuo interessante; forse un po’ troppo simile alla

vecchia idea di un artista; il tipo che si può a stento definire

pittoresco per trascuratezza o per studio; con un’aureola di capelli gialli

che il simpatizzante avrebbe potuto collegare a Galahad e

l’antipatizzante a Pierino Porcospino. Bada bene, non c’era nulla

di effeminato in lui, e nulla di falso nella sua posizione

riguardo alla guerra. Era stato congedato per invalidità, e ciò che

faceva era un lavoro necessario e non un imboscamento; e, al momento,

si stava godendo una breve e molto meritata vacanza.

“È giusto verso il capitano Gahagan dire che, persino nella loro

successiva lite, persino negli ultimi, più neri giorni di odio, e,

lo spero, di follia, che finì in omicidio, il capitano non

sogghignò mai al rivale su quel punto, né assunse mai qualcosa come la

spavalderia del kaki. Ma, a quel tempo, il capitano Gahagan era ancora in

kaki, con una brevissima licenza dal fronte, che avrebbe dovuto

trascorrere alla vicina locanda, ma trascorreva per lo più nella

mia casa.

“Capirai la mia riluttanza a parlare della faccenda; il

fatto che fosse in breve licenza può aver dato una certa impazienza

al suo corteggiamento piuttosto precipitoso di mia figlia, poiché non lo si poteva

chiamare altrimenti. Alcuni dicono che le donne non hanno particolarmente da

obiettare a ciò; ma preferirei di gran lunga non fondarmi su

speculazioni in materia. Ma occupiamoci esclusivamente dei fatti. Sono

i seguenti:

“Una sera, subito dopo il tramonto, o all’incirca all’imbrunire, stavo passeggiando nel mio

giardino col dottore, e ci raggiunse, poco dopo,

Albert Ayres. Avevo appena chiesto al mio amico Green di fare un salto a prendere

qualcosa a cena con noi; ma capitava che fosse piuttosto esausto per una

pesante giornata del suo lavoro scientifico; appariva pallido e stanco; e

declinò in modo piuttosto distante e distratto. Anzi,

pensai che avesse una cattiva cera.”

“Non gode di ottima salute,” s’intromise il signor Pond, d’improvviso. “Non

va molto in giro. Dovete ricordare che è zoppo.” Gli

altri lo fissarono di nuovo, come senza vedere alcuna importanza nell’

interruzione; e di nuovo furono ancor più sconcertati dal suo ulteriore

commento; poiché aggiunse con gran calma:

“La chiave di tutto questo mistero è il fatto che il dottor Green è zoppo.”

“Non ho la più pallida idea di che cosa intendiate,” disse il vicario di

Hanging Burgess vivacemente. “Ma, comunque, farò meglio a proseguire e

dirvi che cosa accadde davvero; e vedrete che di certo

non ebbe nulla a che fare né con la zoppìa né col dottor Green.

“Passeggiando attorno al giardino ci eravamo fermati sotto il gigantesco

rampicante che cresce dall’aiuola e schizza dritto fino al

balcone; e Ayres stava giusto notando la sua straordinaria forza e

rigoglio, quando avemmo tutti una specie di sussulto. Poiché vedemmo l’

intero rampicante muoversi e attorcigliarsi come un mostruoso serpente, in quel

giardino immobile; ogni suo tralcio si sollevava e si contorceva e l’intera

impalcatura del suo fogliame era scossa come da un impossibilmente localizzato

earthquake. Then we saw that long legs like a giant’s were

swinging downwards and kicking wildly above our heads; and Captain

Gahagan, missing his last foothold, fell on his feet on the gravel

path and faced us with a broad grin.

“‘Pray forgive me,’ he said,’ I have been paying an afternoon call.

I dropped in to tea, or perhaps I should say, hopped up to tea; and

I have just dropped out again.’

“I told him, perhaps a little frigidly, that we were always pleased

to receive visitors, but that they generally came in by the front

door. He asked me, in a rather brazen way, if I had no poetic

sympathy with Romeo and the romance of climbing balconies. I

preferred not to reply; but my friend, the doctor, was staring

curiously at the creeper, probably in some freak of his merely

botanical curiosity; and he said, with his faintly acid humour:

‘Isn’t there rather a satire on Romeo in the fact that a weed like

that can climb a balcony? It isn’t quite so common to see a

tropical plant ringing the bell and coming in at the front door.

Climbing doesn’t seem a safe way of classifying. In nature, you

must go very low to find things that go so high.’”

Mr. Pond sat up abruptly and seemed to exhale a breath; but all he

said was, “I thought so.”

“The artist named Ayres,” continued the vicar, “seemed more annoyed

than either of us at this absurd adventure; and his comment was

really much more provocative, though he only said, coolly: ‘Well,

it looks an easy thing to climb; as easy as a great, green ladder.

I fancy I could climb it myself, if it came to that.’

“Then I realized for the first lime, for I’m rather slow in these

things, that Gahagan was glaring at him, as he answered sharply:

‘Am I to understand that it may come to that?’ And then I realized

that they were both glaring at each other; and I guessed, for the

first time, why they hated each other; and what was the meaning of

that scene in my quiet garden.

“Well, I will get on as quickly as I can to the culmination of

these rash boasts, or challenges, of the two tragic rivals. For,

indeed, I do not know which of them had the worst tragedy. Night

had fallen and the moon had risen, though it was not very much

later, cutting up the shady garden into a new pattern of shadows,

when I happened to look out of my study window, which is on an

upper floor.

“I was smoking and reading a book, when a noise like a dog barking,

or rather howling, made me put my head, more or less carelessly,

out of the window; I assumed that it was one of Dr. Green’s dogs

and did not think much of the matter; subconsciously, perhaps,

something spectral about the moonstruck garden and the mood that it

stirred, or some more mysterious premonition of what was to follow,

made the howl sound more hollow and even horrible than it really

was.

“A clear moon was rising high behind me; most of the shady garden

was in all the denser shade; but there were large, pale patches and

squares of moonshine on the paths and the wall in front of me, cut

out as sharply as the pasteboard frame of some shadow-pantomime.

Perhaps the parallel seized on my fancy, partly because light and

shadow were thus bent or doubled into different planes, vertical or

horizontal, like the black and white paper from which children cut

out the figures for such a play. Anyhow, I did think, instantly

and very vividly, of a shadow-pantomime; and, the next instant, I

saw one of the pantomime figures passing in black silhouette across

the wall.

“I knew at once whose shadow it was. Of course, it was drawn out

and distorted; you know how deceptive shadows are; but I could see

the straggling tufts that reminded one of Struwwelpeter; and I

think I told you before that Ayres, the artist, was a little too

like the traditional artist who hasn’t had his hair cut. Also, he

affected that sort of languid stoop that such artists assume; and

there was the high-shouldered stoop exaggerated, as shadows do

exaggerate.

“The next moment, another of these dark caricatures had appeared on

the wall; and it was even more unmistakable. It was also more

active; it was not only a shadow-pantomime but—in a pretty creepy

sense—a knockabout pantomime.”

“Shadows are very deceptive,” said Mr. Pond; and again his friends

stared at him, not because his intervention was important, but

because it seemed trivial and totally unnecessary. But before he

relapsed again into silence, he added:

“The most deceptive thing about a shadow is that it may be quite

accurate.”

“Well, really!” exploded Wotton; but his moderately mild explosion

was overshadowed by one of the abrupt movements which once or twice

moved the gigantic Gahagan to overwhelming but rather baffling

gestures, to detached and yet outrageous interventions. He turned

to his accuser with a bow of overbearing courtesy, or even

courtliness, and said:

“You need not be alarmed, sir. That is one of Mr. Pond’s

paradoxes. We are all very proud of our Pond and of his paradoxes.

Try them in your bath. Pond’s paradoxes are in every home. What

would Mother do without Pond’s—”

“Don’t be a fool, Gahagan!” said Hubert Wotton; and his voice had a

ring of steel which his friends had always respected. There was a

silence, in which Mr. Pond said simply:

“I never uttered a paradox in my life. What I said was a truism.”

The vicar of Hanging Burgess looked considerably baffled, but did

not lose his composure, and continued his story.

“I’m afraid all this seems to me rather off the point; especially

as I haven’t come to the point. I mean the point of my story. Of

course, it doesn’t matter whether the shadows were deceptive or

terremoto. Poi vedemmo che lunghe gambe come quelle di un gigante

dondolavano verso il basso e scalciavano furiosamente sopra le nostre teste; e il capitano

Gahagan, mancando l’ultimo appiglio, cadde in piedi sul sentiero di

ghiaia e ci fronteggiò con un ampio ghigno.

“‘Vi prego di perdonarmi,’ disse, ‘ho fatto una visita pomeridiana.

Sono passato a prendere il tè, o forse dovrei dire, sono saltato su per il tè; e

sono appena ricaduto giù.’

“Gli dissi, forse un po’ freddamente, che eravamo sempre lieti

di ricevere ospiti, ma che essi in genere entravano dalla porta

principale. Mi chiese, in modo piuttosto sfrontato, se non avessi alcuna

simpatia poetica per Romeo e il romanticismo dell’arrampicarsi sui balconi.

Preferii non rispondere; ma il mio amico, il dottore, fissava

incuriosito il rampicante, probabilmente in qualche ghiribizzo della sua mera

curiosità botanica; e disse, col suo umorismo leggermente acido:

‘Non c’è piuttosto una satira su Romeo nel fatto che un’erbaccia come

quella può arrampicarsi su un balcone? Non è poi così comune vedere una

pianta tropicale suonare il campanello ed entrare dalla porta principale.

Arrampicarsi non sembra un modo sicuro di classificarsi. In natura, devi

scendere molto in basso per trovare cose che salgono così in alto.’”

Il signor Pond si raddrizzò di scatto e parve esalare un respiro; ma tutto ciò

che disse fu: “Lo pensavo.”

“L’artista di nome Ayres,” continuò il vicario, “sembrò più infastidito

di entrambi noi da quell’assurda avventura; e il suo commento fu

davvero molto più provocatorio, benché dicesse soltanto, freddamente: ‘Beh,

sembra una cosa facile da scalare; facile come una grande, verde scala.

Credo che potrei arrampicarmici io stesso, se si arrivasse a questo.’

“Allora mi resi conto per la prima volta, perché sono piuttosto lento in queste

cose, che Gahagan lo fissava torvo, mentre rispondeva secco:

‘Devo intendere che si potrebbe arrivare a questo?’ E allora mi resi conto

che si fissavano torvi l’un l’altro; e indovinai, per la

prima volta, perché si odiassero; e quale fosse il significato di

quella scena nel mio quieto giardino.

“Beh, arriverò il più in fretta possibile al culmine di

questi avventati vanti, o sfide, dei due tragici rivali. Poiché,

in verità, non so quale dei due avesse la peggior tragedia. La notte

era scesa e la luna era sorta, benché non fosse molto più

tardi, tagliando l’ombroso giardino in un nuovo disegno di ombre,

quando mi capitò di guardare fuori dalla finestra del mio studio, che è a un

piano superiore.

“Stavo fumando e leggendo un libro, quando un rumore come di un cane che abbaia,

o piuttosto ulula, mi fece sporgere la testa, più o meno distrattamente,

fuori dalla finestra; supposi che fosse uno dei cani del dottor Green

e non ci feci molto caso; forse, inconsciamente,

qualcosa di spettrale nel giardino illune di luna e l’umore che esso

destava, o qualche più misteriosa premonizione di ciò che stava per seguire,

fecero suonare l’ululato più cupo e persino più orribile di quanto

fosse davvero.

“Una limpida luna sorgeva alta dietro di me; gran parte dell’ombroso giardino

era nell’ombra più densa; ma c’erano larghe, pallide chiazze e

quadrati di chiaro di luna sui sentieri e sul muro davanti a me, ritagliati

nettamente come la cornice di cartone di un teatro d’ombre.

Forse il paragone s’impadronì della mia fantasia, in parte perché luce e

ombra erano così piegate o raddoppiate in piani diversi, verticali o

orizzontali, come la carta bianca e nera da cui i bambini ritagliano

le figure per un tale spettacolo. Comunque, pensai, all’istante

e assai vividamente, a un teatro d’ombre; e, l’istante dopo,

vidi una delle figure del teatro passare in nera silhouette attraverso

il muro.

“Riconobbi subito di chi fosse quell’ombra. Certo, era allungata

e distorta; sai quanto siano ingannevoli le ombre; ma potevo vedere

i ciuffi arruffati che ricordavano Pierino Porcospino; e

credo di averti detto prima che Ayres, l’artista, era un po’ troppo

simile al tradizionale artista che non si è tagliato i capelli. Inoltre,

ostentava quella specie di curvatura languida che tali artisti assumono; e

c’era la curvatura dalle spalle alte esagerata, come le ombre

esagerano.

“Il momento dopo, un’altra di queste scure caricature era comparsa sul

muro; ed era ancor più inconfondibile. Era anche più

attiva; non era solo un teatro d’ombre ma—in un senso piuttosto

inquietante—un teatro di percosse.”

“Le ombre sono molto ingannevoli,” disse il signor Pond; e di nuovo i suoi amici

lo fissarono, non perché il suo intervento fosse importante, ma

perché sembrava banale e del tutto superfluo. Ma prima di

ricadere di nuovo nel silenzio, aggiunse:

“La cosa più ingannevole di un’ombra è che può essere del tutto

esatta.”

“Beh, davvero!” esplose Wotton; ma la sua esplosione moderatamente mite

fu oscurata da uno di quei bruschi movimenti che una o due volte

spingevano il gigantesco Gahagan a gesti travolgenti ma piuttosto

sconcertanti, a interventi distaccati eppure oltraggiosi. Si volse

al suo accusatore con un inchino di prepotente cortesia, o persino

di garbo cortigiano, e disse:

“Non abbiate timore, signore. Quello è uno dei paradossi del signor Pond.

Siamo tutti molto orgogliosi del nostro Pond e dei suoi paradossi.

Provateli nel vostro bagno. I paradossi di Pond sono in ogni casa. Che

cosa farebbe la mamma senza i paradossi di Pond—”

“Non fare lo sciocco, Gahagan!” disse Hubert Wotton; e la sua voce aveva un

tintinnio d’acciaio che i suoi amici avevano sempre rispettato. Ci fu un

silenzio, nel quale il signor Pond disse semplicemente:

“Non ho mai pronunciato un paradosso in vita mia. Ciò che ho detto era un truismo.”

Il vicario di Hanging Burgess appariva considerevolmente sconcertato, ma non

perse la compostezza, e continuò la sua storia.

“Temo che tutto questo mi sembri piuttosto fuori tema; specialmente

perché non sono arrivato al punto. Intendo il punto della mia storia. Certo,

non importa se le ombre fossero ingannevoli o

not; because I saw the real people a minute or two afterwards.

It’s true I only saw one of them for a minute, you might say for a

flash; but the other I saw plainly enough.

“The first figure, the long-haired figure I had already identified

with the artist, ran very quickly across the moonlit patch and

vanished into the vast shadow of the creeper that climbed the

balcony; but there is no doubt that he began to climb the creeper.

“The second figure stood for a moment, staring, in the full stare

of the moon; and there was no doubt about him at all. It was

Captain Gahagan, in khaki, and he already had his big service

revolver in his hand. In a high, unnatural voice he cried after

and cursed the other unfortunate troubadour, who had climbed his

romantic rope-ladder of leaves, exactly as he had climbed it

himself.

“At that instant the whole situation became finally clear; for I

saw the hairy head of the unfortunate artist rising out of the

tangle of tropical leaves, in shadow, but all the more unmistakable

for being haloed in the moonshine. But the same moonshine fell

full on the face of the Captain, as glaring as a photographic

portrait; and it glared with a frightful grin or grimace of

hatred.”

Mr. Pond again interposed gently, but with the general effect of a

jerk: “You say it was hatred. Are you sure it was not horror?”

The vicar was very intelligent, and thought before he answered,

even when he did not in the least understand. Then he said: “I

think so. Besides, why should Captain Gahagan be horrified merely

at seeing Mr. Ayres?”

“Perhaps,” said Pond, after a pause, “because he had not had his

hair cut.”

“Pond!” said Wotton very sharply. “Do you fancy this is a case for

jokes? You seem to have forgotten that you said, yourself, it was

a painful matter.”

“I said it was a painful matter,” said Pond, “to think a horrible

thing was done by an old friend.” Then he said, after one of his

sudden pauses: “But I wasn’t thinking of Gahagan.”

The stupefied vicar seemed to have given up everything but the

stubborn pursuit of his story.

“As I have told you, Captain Gahagan cursed his rival from below,

and called on him to come down; but he did not attempt to climb the

creeper himself, though he had already shown how quickly he could

do it. Unfortunately, he did something else; which he could do

much more quickly. I saw the blue flash of the pistol-barrel in

the moon, as he lifted it; and then the red flash; and then a puff

of smoke detached itself and climbed the sky, like a cloud; and the

man on the green ladder fell crashing like a stone through the

thrashing great leaves to the dark space below.

“I could not see so clearly what was happening in that dark space;

but I knew, for all practical purposes, that the man was dead; for

his slayer laid hold of one leg of the corpse and dragged it away

down the darkling and descending paths of the garden. And when I

heard a distant splash, I knew he had thrown the corpse into the

river.

“Well, as I told you before, that is my very serious testimony to

what I saw and knew; but I give it only from a sense of social duty

to any individuals who may be involved; I admit the circumstances

are such that legal proof would be very difficult now.

“Albert Ayres had entirely disappeared by next morning; but it is

true, as I have said, that he had once spoken of going off on a

sketching-tour very early.

“Captain Gahagan had also entirely disappeared by next morning; but

I believe it is true that his leave was practically up, that in any

case he had to return to the front; and it was utterly hopeless to

raise a question—which would, already, be called a doubtful

question—at a moment when every man was needed, when common

convicts were already working out their expiation in the field; and

when all information had to be hampered, and a veil hung between us

and all that vast labyrinth called ‘somewhere in France.’ But

hearing that, for personal reasons, it was essential that Captain

Gahagan should be asked to clear or explain his record, I have

brought the matter up again now. And I have stated nothing that I

did not see.”

“You have stated it very clearly,” said Mr. Pond. “More clearly

than you know. But even on the clearest moonlight night, as we

agreed, shadows can be very deceptive.”

“You’ve said that before,” said Sir Hubert rather irritably.

“And, as I have also said before,” observed the unruffled Mr. Pond,

“a shadow is most misleading when it is precisely correct.”

Silence suddenly fell on the group; and the silence became more and

more tense, for, after these random shots, which seemed so very

random, fired by Mr. Pond as he retired from the argument, everyone

felt that nothing could now delay the main action. For some time

it looked rather like inaction; for Gahagan, who had been growing

gloomier and gloomier, still sat kicking his heels, as if he had

nothing to say. And indeed, when sharply called on by Sir Hubert

for his statement, he was, at first, understood to declare

seriously, not to say grimly, that he had nothing to say.

“What can I say, except what they call pleading guilty? What can I

say, except that I did do a horrible thing; I did commit a hateful

crime; and my sin is ever before me.”

The solicitor seemed suddenly to bristle with electric needles of a

sort of cold excitement.

“Pardon me, pardon me!” he cried. “Before you say any more, before

you say a word more, it must be understood that it may be necessary

to take note of it in a legal manner. On some minor matters we are

permitted a certain discretion; but if we are to listen to an

actual confession of murder—”

Gahagan shouted; he shouted so loud that the others were almost too

no; perché vidi le persone reali un minuto o due dopo.

È vero, ne vidi uno solo per un minuto, si potrebbe dire per un

lampo; ma l’altro lo vidi abbastanza chiaramente.

«La prima figura, quella dai capelli lunghi che avevo già identificato

con l’artista, corse rapidissima attraverso la chiazza illuminata dalla luna e

scomparve nella vasta ombra del rampicante che saliva lungo il

balcone; ma non c’è dubbio che cominciò ad arrampicarsi sul rampicante.

«La seconda figura restò un momento, fissa, in pieno sguardo

della luna; e su di lui non c’era alcun dubbio. Era

il capitano Gahagan, in kaki, e teneva già la sua grande

rivoltella d’ordinanza in mano. Con voce acuta, innaturale, gridò dietro

e maledisse l’altro sventurato trovatore, che aveva scalato la sua

romantica scala di corda di foglie, esattamente come l’aveva scalata

lui stesso.

«In quell’istante l’intera situazione divenne finalmente chiara; perché

vidi la testa irsuta dello sventurato artista emergere dal

groviglio di foglie tropicali, in ombra, ma tanto più inconfondibile

per essere aureolata dal chiaro di luna. Ma lo stesso chiaro di luna cadde

in pieno sul volto del capitano, nitido come un ritratto

fotografico; e risplendeva d’un tremendo ghigno o smorfia di

odio.»

Il signor Pond interpose di nuovo con dolcezza, ma con l’effetto complessivo di uno

strattone: «Lei dice che era odio. È sicuro che non fosse orrore?»

Il vicario era molto intelligente, e rifletté prima di rispondere,

anche quando non capiva minimamente. Poi disse: «Credo

di sì. E poi, perché il capitano Gahagan dovrebbe inorridire soltanto

nel vedere il signor Ayres?»

«Forse,» disse Pond, dopo una pausa, «perché non si era fatto

tagliare i capelli.»

«Pond!» disse Wotton assai bruscamente. «Le pare che questo sia un caso da

scherzi? Sembra aver dimenticato che ha detto, lei stesso, che era

una faccenda penosa.»

«Ho detto che era una faccenda penosa,» disse Pond, «pensare che una cosa orribile

sia stata fatta da un vecchio amico.» Poi disse, dopo una delle sue

improvvise pause: «Ma non stavo pensando a Gahagan.»

Il vicario stupefatto pareva aver rinunciato a tutto tranne che alla

ostinata prosecuzione del suo racconto.

«Come vi ho detto, il capitano Gahagan maledisse il rivale dal basso,

e lo esortò a scendere; ma non tentò di arrampicarsi sul

rampicante lui stesso, benché avesse già mostrato con quanta rapidità sapesse

farlo. Purtroppo, fece qualcos’altro; che poteva fare

molto più rapidamente. Vidi il lampo azzurro della canna della pistola nella

luna, mentre la sollevava; e poi il lampo rosso; e poi uno sbuffo

di fumo si staccò e salì nel cielo, come una nube; e

l’uomo sulla verde scala precipitò fragorosamente come una pietra tra le

grandi foglie sferzanti fino allo spazio buio sottostante.

«Non riuscivo a vedere così chiaramente cosa stesse accadendo in quello spazio buio;

ma sapevo, a tutti gli effetti pratici, che l’uomo era morto; perché

il suo uccisore afferrò una gamba del cadavere e lo trascinò via

giù per i sentieri oscuri e digradanti del giardino. E quando

udii un tonfo lontano, seppi che aveva gettato il cadavere nel

fiume.

«Ebbene, come vi ho detto prima, questa è la mia assai seria testimonianza su

ciò che vidi e seppi; ma la rendo solo per un senso di dovere sociale

verso chiunque possa esservi coinvolto; ammetto che le circostanze

sono tali che una prova legale sarebbe ormai assai difficile.

«Albert Ayres era interamente scomparso l’indomani mattina; ma è

vero, come ho detto, che una volta aveva parlato di partire per una

gita di disegno assai per tempo.

«Anche il capitano Gahagan era interamente scomparso l’indomani mattina; ma

credo sia vero che la sua licenza era praticamente finita, che in ogni

caso doveva tornare al fronte; ed era del tutto vano

sollevare una questione — che sarebbe già stata detta una questione

dubbia — in un momento in cui ogni uomo era necessario, quando comuni

galeotti scontavano già la loro espiazione sul campo; e

quando ogni informazione doveva essere ostacolata, e un velo pendeva tra noi

e tutto quel vasto labirinto chiamato ‘da qualche parte in Francia.’ Ma

avendo saputo che, per ragioni personali, era essenziale che al capitano

Gahagan si chiedesse di chiarire o spiegare la sua condotta, ho

riportato ora la faccenda a galla. E non ho affermato nulla che io

non abbia visto.»

«L’ha affermato assai chiaramente,» disse il signor Pond. «Più chiaramente

di quanto lei sappia. Ma anche nella più limpida notte di luna, come

convenimmo, le ombre possono essere assai ingannevoli.»

«L’ha già detto,» disse Sir Hubert piuttosto irritato.

«E, come ho pure già detto,» osservò l’imperturbabile signor Pond,

«un’ombra è più fuorviante quando è esattamente corretta.»

Il Silenzio cadde d’improvviso sul gruppo; e il silenzio si fece sempre più

teso, perché, dopo questi colpi a caso, che parevano così del tutto

casuali, sparati dal signor Pond mentre si ritirava dalla discussione, ognuno

sentì che nulla poteva ormai ritardare l’azione principale. Per qualche tempo

parve piuttosto inazione; perché Gahagan, che si era fatto

sempre più cupo, stava ancora seduto a battere i tacchi, come se non avesse

nulla da dire. E in effetti, quando fu bruscamente sollecitato da Sir Hubert

a rendere la sua dichiarazione, si comprese, dapprima, che dichiarava

seriamente, per non dire cupamente, che non aveva nulla da dire.

«Cosa posso dire, se non ciò che chiamano dichiararsi colpevole? Cosa posso

dire, se non che ho fatto una cosa orribile; ho commesso un odioso

delitto; e il mio peccato mi è sempre dinanzi.»

Il legale parve d’improvviso rizzarsi di aghi elettrici d’una

sorta di fredda eccitazione.

«Mi perdoni, mi perdoni!» esclamò. «Prima che dica altro, prima

che dica una parola di più, si deve intendere che potrebbe essere necessario

prenderne nota in modo legale. Su alcune questioni minori ci è

concessa una certa discrezione; ma se dobbiamo ascoltare una

vera e propria confessione di omicidio —»

Gahagan gridò; gridò così forte che gli altri erano quasi troppo

surprised to notice that it was a shout of laughter, but not very

genial laughter.

“What!” he cried. “Do you think I’m confessing to a murder? Oh,

this is getting tiresome! Of course I never committed any murder.

I said I committed a crime; but it’s not to any damned little

lawyer that I have to apologize for it.”

He swung round, facing the clergyman; and his whole bodily and

mental attitude seemed to alter; so that, when he spoke at last, it

was like a new man speaking.

“I mean, it’s for you. What can I say to you? It’s personal for

you; I mean, it’s real. It’s no good talking at large about such

things. It’s no good hiding in a crowd; or saying that the crime

was committed by a lot of poor devils on leave from hell; to whom a

holiday was heaven; only it was a very earthly paradise; a little

too like a Moslem paradise. I did make love to your daughter when

I had no right to, for I didn’t really know my own mind. None of

us had any mind on those holidays from hell. And it’s true that I

did have a rival. It’s true I was in a rage with my rival; I’m

still in a rage with him, when I think of what he did. Only—” He

paused, as with a new embarrassment.

“Go on,” said Mr. Pond gently.

“Only my rival wasn’t the artist with the long hair,” said Gahagan.

Hubert Wotton again looked up sharply, with a frowning stare; but

he spoke quietly as he directed Gahagan to tell his story properly

from the start.

“I had better start,” said Gahagan, “where the other story started:

just about the time when we both heard the howl of a dog in the

dark garden. I may explain that I was actually staying with Ayres,

the artist, for that night; we had become quite good friends,

really; though there may have been a bit of romantic swagger about

the troubadour business at an earlier time.

“I was packing up and sorting out some of my light luggage; that is

how I happened to be cleaning my service revolver. Ayres was

looking through some of his sketch-books; and I left him at it when

I went out, just as Mr. Whiteways looked out, in casual curiosity,

over that sudden noise in the night. Only I heard what he did not

hear. I not only heard what sounded like the howl of a dog, but I

also heard a whistle, such as a man uses when calling a dog.

“Also, I saw what he did not see. For an instant, in a gap in the

trellis and tracery of a vine, I saw, very white in the moonlight,

the face of Paul Green, that distinguished man of science. He is

distinguished and he looks distinguished; I remember thinking, at

the time, what a fine head he had, and that the silver moulding of

his features under the moon made them quite beautiful. I had a

reason for having my attention thus arrested by that silvery mask,

for, at that precise moment, it wore a sort of smile of hatred that

turned one’s blood cold.

“Then the face vanished; and again my experience was much like the

vicar’s, except that I did not see everything which happened just

behind my back. But I swung round in time to see that somebody had

run across the path, and begun to climb the creeper. He climbed it

very quickly, much quicker than I had done, but it was not easy to

see him or recognize him in the dark shadow of the leaves.

“I had an idea that he was long in the limbs and had the sort of

high-shouldered stoop that has been described; then I saw, as the

vicar did, the head emerge clear of the foliage, only outlined by

the moon with a sort of bristly halo of hair. Only then, for the

second time that night, I saw what the vicar did not see. The

Romeo, the climbing troubadour, turned his head, and, for a moment,

I saw it in profile, a black shape against the moon. And I said to

myself: ‘My God! It’s a dog, after all.’”

The vicar echoed the invocation faintly; the lawyer made a sharp

movement as if to intervene; and Wotton told his friend rather

brusquely to go on; which had the effect of producing a sort of

abrupt languor, alarmingly like a disposition to leave off.

“Rather interesting man, Marco Polo,” said Captain Gahagan, in a

vaguely conversational tone. “I think it was Marco Polo, the

Venetian; anyhow, it was one of those early mediæval travellers.

You know everybody used to say they told nothing but tall stories

about mandrakes and mermaids; but, in many cases, it has been found

since that their tall tales were true. Anyhow, this chap said

there were men walking about with the heads of dogs. Now, if

you’ll look at one of the larger apes, like the baboon, you’ll see

that his head really is very like a dog’s; not nearly so much like

a man’s as the head of one of the smaller monkeys.”

Mr. Little, the lawyer, was rapidly turning over some of his

papers, with a shrewd frown and a sharp, alert manner.

“One moment, Captain Gahagan,” he interposed. “I have a fancy that

you are rather a traveller, yourself; and have picked up

travellers’ tales in many different places. It looks to me as if

you had picked up this one in the Rue Morgue.”

“I wish I had,” replied the Captain.

“In the story there,” pursued the solicitor, “I think there was an

escaped anthropoid ape who disobeyed his master and would not

return.”

“Yes,” said Mr. Pond, in a low voice, rather like a groan. “But in

this case it was not disobeying its master.”

“You had better tell the rest of this story, Pond,” said the

Captain, with one of his curious collapses into irresponsible

repose. “You evidently guessed the real story, I don’t know how,

before I began to tell it.”

Mr. Little appeared to be somewhat annoyed, and snapped out: “I

consider the Captain told this curious tale, for what it is worth,

in a very melodramatic and misleading manner. I have it, in my

notes, that he certainly said that ‘Somebody ran across the path

sorpresi per accorgersi che era una risata, ma non una risata

troppo cordiale.

«Cosa!» esclamò. «Credete che io stia confessando un omicidio? Oh,

questo comincia a diventare noioso! Naturalmente non ho mai commesso alcun omicidio.

Ho detto che ho commesso un delitto; ma non è a un qualsiasi maledetto piccolo

avvocato che devo scusarmene.»

Si voltò di scatto, fronteggiando il pastore; e il suo intero atteggiamento

corporeo e mentale parve mutare; sicché, quando parlò infine,

fu come se parlasse un uomo nuovo.

«Voglio dire, è per lei. Cosa posso dirle? Per lei è

personale; voglio dire, è reale. Non serve a nulla parlare in generale di simili

cose. Non serve a nulla nascondersi in una folla; o dire che il delitto

è stato commesso da un branco di poveri diavoli in licenza dall’inferno; per i quali una

vacanza era il paradiso; solo che era un paradiso assai terreno; un po’

troppo simile a un paradiso musulmano. Ho fatto la corte a sua figlia quando

non ne avevo il diritto, perché non conoscevo davvero il mio stesso animo. Nessuno di

noi aveva animo alcuno in quelle vacanze dall’inferno. Ed è vero che

avevo un rivale. È vero che ero in collera col mio rivale; sono

ancora in collera con lui, quando penso a ciò che fece. Solo che —» Si

fermò, come per un nuovo imbarazzo.

«Continui,» disse il signor Pond con dolcezza.

«Solo che il mio rivale non era l’artista dai capelli lunghi,» disse Gahagan.

Hubert Wotton alzò di nuovo lo sguardo di scatto, con un cipiglio corrucciato; ma

parlò con calma mentre invitava Gahagan a raccontare la sua storia come si deve

dall’inizio.

«Farei meglio a cominciare,» disse Gahagan, «da dove è cominciata l’altra storia:

proprio verso il momento in cui entrambi udimmo l’ululato d’un cane nel

buio giardino. Devo spiegare che quella notte stavo effettivamente presso Ayres,

l’artista; eravamo diventati davvero buoni amici,

per davvero; benché forse ci fosse stata un po’ di romantica spavalderia intorno

alla faccenda del trovatore in un tempo anteriore.

«Stavo facendo i bagagli e mettendo in ordine parte dei miei leggeri effetti; ecco

come mi capitò di star pulendo la mia rivoltella d’ordinanza. Ayres

sfogliava alcuni dei suoi album da disegno; e lo lasciai lì

quando uscii, proprio mentre il signor Whiteways si affacciava, con casuale curiosità,

per quell’improvviso rumore nella notte. Solo che io udii ciò che lui non

udì. Non solo udii ciò che pareva l’ululato d’un cane, ma

udii anche un fischio, come quello che un uomo usa per chiamare un cane.

«Inoltre, vidi ciò che lui non vide. Per un istante, in un varco nel

graticcio e nel traforo d’una vite, vidi, bianchissimo al chiaro di luna,

il volto di Paul Green, quell’insigne uomo di scienza. È

insigne e ha l’aria insigne; ricordo di aver pensato, in quel

momento, che bella testa avesse, e che il modellato argenteo dei

suoi lineamenti sotto la luna li rendeva del tutto belli. Avevo una

ragione perché la mia attenzione fosse così arrestata da quella maschera argentea,

perché, in quel preciso istante, portava una sorta di sorriso d’odio che

gelava il sangue.

«Poi il volto svanì; e di nuovo la mia esperienza fu assai simile a quella

del vicario, salvo che io non vidi tutto ciò che accadde proprio

alle mie spalle. Ma mi voltai in tempo per vedere che qualcuno aveva

attraversato di corsa il sentiero, e aveva cominciato ad arrampicarsi sul rampicante. Vi si arrampicò

assai rapidamente, molto più in fretta di quanto avessi fatto io, ma non era facile

vederlo o riconoscerlo nella buia ombra delle foglie.

«Mi parve che fosse lungo di membra e avesse quella specie di

curva dalle spalle alte che è stata descritta; poi vidi, come

il vicario, la testa emergere netta dal fogliame, solo delineata dalla

luna con una sorta di irta aureola di capelli. Solo allora, per la

seconda volta quella notte, vidi ciò che il vicario non vide. Il

Romeo, il trovatore rampicante, voltò la testa, e, per un momento,

la vidi di profilo, una sagoma nera contro la luna. E dissi tra

me: ‘Mio Dio! È un cane, dopotutto.’»

Il vicario echeggiò debolmente l’invocazione; l’avvocato fece un brusco

movimento come per intervenire; e Wotton disse all’amico piuttosto

bruscamente di continuare; il che ebbe l’effetto di produrre una sorta di

improvviso languore, allarmantemente simile a una disposizione a smettere.

«Uomo piuttosto interessante, Marco Polo,» disse il capitano Gahagan, in un

tono vagamente colloquiale. «Credo fosse Marco Polo, il

veneziano; comunque, era uno di quei primi viaggiatori medievali.

Sapete, tutti dicevano che non raccontavano altro che frottole

su mandragole e sirene; ma, in molti casi, si è scoperto

da allora che le loro frottole erano vere. Comunque, questo tale disse

che c’erano uomini che andavano in giro con le teste di cane. Ora, se

guardate una delle scimmie più grandi, come il babbuino, vedrete

che la sua testa somiglia davvero moltissimo a quella d’un cane; non tanto quanto

quella d’un uomo somiglia alla testa d’una delle scimmie più piccole.»

Il signor Little, l’avvocato, stava rapidamente rivoltando alcune delle sue

carte, con un cipiglio scaltro e un fare acuto e vigile.

«Un momento, capitano Gahagan,» interpose. «Ho l’impressione che

lei sia piuttosto un viaggiatore anche di suo; e abbia raccolto

racconti di viaggiatori in molti luoghi diversi. Mi sembra che

lei abbia raccolto questo nella Rue Morgue.»

«Vorrei averlo fatto,» replicò il capitano.

«In quella storia,» proseguì il legale, «credo ci fosse una

scimmia antropoide scappata che disobbedì al padrone e non volle

tornare.»

«Sì,» disse il signor Pond, a bassa voce, quasi con un gemito. «Ma in

questo caso non stava disobbedendo al suo padrone.»

«Farebbe meglio a raccontare lei il resto di questa storia, Pond,» disse il

capitano, con uno dei suoi curiosi cedimenti in un riposo irresponsabile.

«Lei ha evidentemente indovinato la storia vera, non so come,

prima ancora che io cominciassi a raccontarla.»

Il signor Little parve alquanto seccato, e sbottò: «Ritengo

che il capitano abbia raccontato questa curiosa storiella, per quel che vale,

in modo assai melodrammatico e fuorviante. Ho, nei miei

appunti, che ha certamente detto che ‘Qualcuno attraversò di corsa il sentiero

and began to climb the creeper.’”

“I was quite pedantically correct,” said Gahagan, waving his hand,

condescendingly. “I was careful to state that some BODY ran and

climbed. I attempted no theological or metaphysical speculations

about the soul of an ape.”

“But this is perfectly ghastly!” cried the clergyman, who was

deeply shaken. “Are you sure the thing I saw was an ape?”

“I was quite close,” said the Captain. “I saw the shape and you

only saw the shadow.”

“No,” said Pond softly, “he saw the shape and could not believe it

because it was the shadow. That is what I meant by saying a shadow

can deceive by accuracy. Nine times out of ten, a shadow is out of

drawing. But it can happen, in special circumstances, that it is

an exact silhouette. Only we always expect it to be distorted; and

so we are deceived by its not being distorted. The vicar was not

surprised that the hairy, high-shouldered Mr. Ayres should throw a

shadow looking like a shambling hunchback or a bristly, humped

figure. But in reality it WAS a bristly, humped figure. I guessed

that when he first said, just afterwards, that your own figure was

much more unmistakable. Why should it be unmistakable, unless the

other was a mistake?”

“From where I was, there could be no mistake,” said Gahagan. “I

knew it was an ape, and I guessed it was from the cages or kennels

of the eminent biologist next door. I had a wild hope it might

have been meant as some ghastly joke; but I wasn’t taking any

risks; I happen to know that sort of anthropoid is no joke. At the

best, he might easily bite and then—well, there were all sorts of

nightmare notions half-formed in one’s mind.

“There was another side to your biological friend’s interest in

pets; vivisection, inoculation, intoxication, drugs—Lord knows

what might be mixed up in it. So I shot the brute dead, and I’m

afraid I can’t apologize. I threw the body into the river; as you

know, it’s a very rapid and rushing river, and, so far as I know,

nothing more was ever heard of it. Certainly, Dr. Paul Green did

not venture to advertise for it in the papers.”

The solid and deep-chested rustic parson suddenly shuddered from

head to foot. The spasm passed and he said, heavily, that it was

an awful business.

“And THAT is what I meant,” said Mr. Pond, “by saying how bad it is

to hear an old acquaintance accused of a horrible action. It was,

also, what I meant by saying that the key to all this riddle is the

fact that Dr. Green is lame.”

“Even now,” muttered the vicar, “I’m not so clear what you mean by

that.”

“It’s all ugly enough,” answered Pond, “but I suppose we may fairly

say that the doctor is, in a rather literal sense, a mad doctor.

The point is that I think I know what finally drove him mad. He

had a remarkable personality; he was in love with the lady at the

Vicarage and had got a good deal of influence there; as Gahagan

truly says, he’s really a very fine-looking fellow and, naturally,

quite active; only everything was conditioned by the accident that

he was lame.

“What put the finishing touch to his madness, on that terrible

summer night under the moon, was something that I think one can

partly understand, with a little imagination; something not

altogether unnatural, if anything ending in such insanity can be

anything but unnatural. He heard his rivals boasting about doing

the one thing he could not do. First, one of the young men

swaggered about having done it—you do swagger, Gahagan, and it’s

no good saying you don’t. And the other young man was worse; for

he actually sneered at doing it because it was so easy to do when,

for Green, it was impossible to do.

“Naturally, a mind like his leapt, as we know it did leap, even in

conversation, to the retort that climbing is no great sign of

superiority; that a brainless creeper can climb; that an ape can

climb better than a man. ‘You have to go very low to find things

that go so high.’ Considered as a logical repartee, it was quite a

good one. But his mind was not running merely on logic and

repartee; he was blind and boiling with jealousy and passion, and

he was a little cracked. Let’s hope he only meant to make a sort

of demonstration; but, anyhow, that was what he was trying to

demonstrate.”

Mr. Little, the lawyer, still turned a flinty face to the company;

he had obviously taken a dislike to Gahagan, who had a way of

irritating legal and law-abiding persons.

“I do not know if we are required to accept this extraordinary

story, on the strength of Mr. Pond’s ingenious hypothesis,” he said

rather sharply; “but there is one more question I should like to

ask.”

He looked down at his papers, as if consulting them, and then

looked up again, saying, still more sharply, in the style he had

learnt from cross-examinations: “Is it not true, Captain Gahagan,

that you are rather famous for telling remarkable stories? I have

it in my notes that you once delighted the company by saying you

had seen six great sea-serpents, each swallowing the last. You

reported a remarkable little incident of a giant who was buried up

to the eyebrows in Muswell Hill; and you are supposed to have given

a very vivid description of a water-spout frozen all the way up to

the sky. Your interesting account of the discovery of the ruins of

the Tower of Babel—”

Sir Hubert Wotton, with all his apparent simplicity, had a quality

of sense that sometimes struck like a sledge-hammer. He had

preserved the silence of perfect impartiality throughout; but he

suddenly stopped the last splutter of the solicitor’s spitefulness,

as if he had struck him physically dumb.

“I cannot have all this,” he said. “We know Gahagan; and his yarns

e cominciò ad arrampicarsi sul rampicante.’»

«Fui perfettamente pedante nell’esattezza,» disse Gahagan, agitando la mano,

con condiscendenza. «Fui attento a dichiarare che un qualche CORPO corse e

si arrampicò. Non tentai alcuna speculazione teologica o metafisica

sull’anima d’una scimmia.»

«Ma questo è assolutamente spaventoso!» esclamò il pastore, che era

profondamente scosso. «È sicuro che la cosa che vidi fosse una scimmia?»

«Ero abbastanza vicino,» disse il capitano. «Io vidi la forma e lei

vide soltanto l’ombra.»

«No,» disse Pond sommessamente, «lui vide la forma e non poté crederci

perché era l’ombra. Questo è ciò che intendevo dicendo che un’ombra

può ingannare per esattezza. Nove volte su dieci, un’ombra è mal

tracciata. Ma può accadere, in circostanze particolari, che sia

una silhouette esatta. Solo che ci aspettiamo sempre che sia distorta; e

così siamo ingannati dal suo non esserlo. Il vicario non fu

sorpreso che il peloso Ayres, dalle spalle alte, gettasse un’

ombra simile a un gobbo dinoccolato o a una figura irta e ingobbita.

Ma in realtà ERA una figura irta e ingobbita. L’indovinai

quando egli disse, subito dopo, che la sua stessa figura era

assai più inconfondibile. Perché dovrebbe essere inconfondibile, se non perché

l’altra era un equivoco?»

«Da dove mi trovavo io, non poteva esserci equivoco,» disse Gahagan. «Sapevo

che era una scimmia, e indovinai che veniva dalle gabbie o dai canili

dell’eminente biologo della porta accanto. Ebbi una folle speranza che potesse

essere stata concepita come qualche macabro scherzo; ma non correvo

rischi; si dà il caso che io sappia che quel genere di antropoide non è uno scherzo. Nel

migliore dei casi, poteva facilmente mordere e poi — beh, c’erano ogni sorta di

nozioni da incubo mezzo formate nella mente.

«C’era un altro aspetto dell’interesse del vostro amico biologo per gli

animali; vivisezione, inoculazione, intossicazione, droghe — Dio sa

cosa vi potesse essere mescolato dentro. Così abbattei la bestia, e

temo di non potermene scusare. Gettai il corpo nel fiume; come

sapete, è un fiume assai rapido e impetuoso, e, per quel che so,

non se ne udì mai più nulla. Certamente, il dottor Paul Green non

si azzardò a cercarne notizia sui giornali.»

Il solido pastore campagnolo dall’ampio petto rabbrividì d’un tratto da

capo a piedi. Lo spasmo passò ed egli disse, pesantemente, che era

una faccenda tremenda.

«E QUELLO è ciò che intendevo,» disse il signor Pond, «dicendo quanto sia brutto

udire un vecchio conoscente accusato d’un’azione orribile. Era,

anche, ciò che intendevo dicendo che la chiave di tutto questo enigma è il

fatto che il dottor Green è zoppo.»

«Anche adesso,» mormorò il vicario, «non mi è così chiaro cosa lei intenda con

questo.»

«È tutto abbastanza brutto,» rispose Pond, «ma suppongo che possiamo ragionevolmente

dire che il dottore è, in un senso piuttosto letterale, un medico pazzo.

Il punto è che credo di sapere cosa infine lo spinse alla pazzia. Aveva

una personalità notevole; era innamorato della signorina della

canonica e vi aveva acquistato una buona dose d’influenza; come Gahagan

dice giustamente, è davvero un uomo di bell’aspetto e, naturalmente,

del tutto attivo; solo che tutto era condizionato dall’accidente che

era zoppo.

«Ciò che diede il tocco finale alla sua follia, in quella terribile

notte d’estate sotto la luna, fu qualcosa che credo si possa

in parte comprendere, con un po’ di immaginazione; qualcosa di non

del tutto innaturale, se qualcosa che finisce in tale insania può

essere altro che innaturale. Udì i suoi rivali vantarsi di fare

l’unica cosa che egli non poteva fare. Primo, uno dei giovani

si vantò di averla fatta — tu ti vanti, Gahagan, ed è

inutile che tu dica di no. E l’altro giovane era peggio; perché

egli in realtà sogghignò sul farla perché era così facile a farsi quando,

per Green, era impossibile a farsi.

«Naturalmente, una mente come la sua balzò, come sappiamo che balzò, perfino

nella conversazione, alla replica che arrampicarsi non è gran segno di

superiorità; che un rampicante senza cervello può arrampicarsi; che una scimmia può

arrampicarsi meglio di un uomo. ‘Bisogna andare assai in basso per trovare cose

che vanno così in alto.’ Considerata come battuta logica, era una

replica proprio buona. Ma la sua mente non correva soltanto sulla logica e

sulla battuta; era cieco e ribolliva di gelosia e passione, ed

era un po’ toccato. Speriamo intendesse solo fare una sorta

di dimostrazione; ma, comunque, era ciò che stava cercando di

dimostrare.»

Il signor Little, l’avvocato, volgeva ancora una faccia di selce alla compagnia;

aveva evidentemente preso in antipatia Gahagan, che aveva il modo di

irritare le persone legali e ligie alla legge.

«Non so se ci si richieda di accettare questa straordinaria

storia, sulla forza dell’ingegnosa ipotesi del signor Pond,» disse

piuttosto bruscamente; «ma c’è ancora una domanda che vorrei

porre.»

Abbassò lo sguardo sulle sue carte, come consultandole, e poi

rialzò gli occhi, dicendo, ancor più bruscamente, nello stile che aveva

appreso dai controinterrogatori: «Non è vero, capitano Gahagan,

che lei è piuttosto famoso per raccontare storie straordinarie? Ho

nei miei appunti che una volta lei deliziò la compagnia dicendo di aver

visto sei grandi serpenti marini, ciascuno che inghiottiva il precedente.

Lei riferì un notevole piccolo episodio d’un gigante sepolto fino

alle sopracciglia a Muswell Hill; e si suppone che lei abbia fornito

una descrizione assai vivida d’una tromba d’acqua gelata fino su

nel cielo. Il suo interessante resoconto della scoperta delle rovine della

Torre di Babele —»

Sir Hubert Wotton, con tutta la sua apparente semplicità, aveva una qualità

di buon senso che a volte colpiva come una mazza. Aveva

conservato il silenzio della perfetta imparzialità per tutto il tempo; ma

d’improvviso arrestò l’ultimo schizzo della malevolenza del legale,

come se lo avesse reso fisicamente muto.

«Non posso permettere tutto questo,» disse. «Noi conosciamo Gahagan; e le sue frottole

are all nonsense, and your trying to turn them against him is worse

nonsense. So long as you had a serious charge to bring, we gave

you every opportunity to prove it. If you are going to talk about

things that nobody alive ever took seriously, least of all Gahagan,

I rule them out.”

“Very well,” snapped Mr. Little, “my last question shall be a very

practical one. If Captain Gahagan only did what he says he did,

why the devil didn’t he say so? Why did he disappear? Why did he

do a bolt early next morning?”

Peter Gahagan lifted his large figure laboriously out of the seat;

he did not even look at the lawyer; but his eyes were fixed on the

old clergyman, with a profound expression of sorrow.

“There is an answer to that,” he said. “But I would much rather

give it to anybody except Mr. Whiteways.”

And, strangely enough perhaps, the moment Mr. Whiteways heard this

refusal he rose also and held out his hand to Gahagan.

“I believe you,” he said. “It’s just that last sentence that has

made me believe you.”

The scornful solicitor, being thus deserted by his own client,

stuffed his papers back into his little black bag; and the

irregular conference broke up.

Gahagan did tell the truth about the last question afterwards, to

the person to whom he told everything, to Joan Varney, to whom he

was engaged. And, queer as it sounded, she seemed to understand.

“If you like to put it so,” he said, “I didn’t run away from the

police; I ran away from the girl. And I know it sounds mad; but I

really felt at the moment I was doing my best for her, in a beastly

situation and among a lot of beastly alternatives. I knew by next

morning that the vicar was saying he had seen me commit murder.

Suppose I contradicted it—well, to begin with, she would have to

know that her old friend, the friend of her pets, was a horrible

lunatic who had offered her a sort of disgusting insult at the

best.

“But it wasn’t only that. I had behaved as badly as anybody; I was

in a shamefully false position; and, if I remained, there was

nothing before us but crawling through all that mire of miserable

explanation and hopeless remorse, in which it is hard to say

whether the man or the woman has the worst of it. And then a queer

thought came to me—a secret, almost subconscious thought; but I

couldn’t get rid of the notion. Suppose she went on thinking, and

remembered afterwards, in calmer times, that one man had killed

another for her. She would be horrified; but she would not be

humiliated. A mad whisper kept on repeating to me that in the long

run she would be—a little proud.”

“I think you’re right about her,” said Joan, in her straight way.

“But, all the same, you ought to have told her the truth.”

“Joan,” he said, “I simply hadn’t the courage.”

“I know,” she said. “I also know all about your having the D.S.O.;

and I’ve seen you, myself, jump a chasm it made me sick to look at.

But that’s what’s the matter with all you fine, fighting

gentlemen.” Her head lifted very slightly. “You haven’t the

courage.”

A TALL STORY

They had been discussing the new troubles in Germany: the three old

friends, Sir Hubert Wotton, the famous official; Mr. Pond, the

obscure official; and Captain Gahagan, who never did a stroke of

work in the way of putting pen to paper, but liked making up the

most fantastic stories on the spur of the moment. On this

occasion, however, the group was increased to four; for Gahagan’s

wife was present, a candid-looking young woman with light-brown

hair and dark-brown eyes. They had only just recently been

married; and the presence of Joan Gahagan still stimulated the

Captain to rather excessive flights of showing-off.

Captain Gahagan looked like a Regency buck; Mr. Pond looked like a

round-eyed fish, with the beard and brow of Socrates; Sir Hubert

Wotton looked like Sir Hubert Wotton—it summed up a very sound and

virile quality in him, for which his friends had a great respect.

“It’s an infernal shame,” Wotton was saying, “the way these fellows

have treated the Jews: perfectly decent and harmless Jews, who were

no more Communists than I am; little men who’d worked their way up

by merit and industry, all kicked out of their posts without a

penny of compensation. Surely you agree with that, Gahagan?”

“Of course I do,” replied Gahagan. “I never kicked a Jew. I can

distinctly remember three and a half occasions on which I

definitely refrained from doing so. As for all those hundreds and

thousands of poor little fiddlers and actors and chess-players, I

think it was a damned shame that they should be kicked out or

kicked at all. But I fancy they must be kicking themselves, for

having been so faithful to Germany and even, everywhere else,

pretty generally pro-German.”

“Even that can be exaggerated,” said Mr. Pond. “Do you remember

the case of Carl Schiller, that happened during the War? It was

all kept rather quiet, as I have reason to know; for the thing

happened, in some sense, in my department. I have generally found

spy stories the dullest of all forms of detective fiction; in my

own modest researches into the light literature of murder, I

invariably avoid them. But this story really did have an

unexpected and rather astonishing ending. Of course, you know that

in wartime the official dealing with these things is very much

exposed to amateurs, as the Duke of Wellington was exposed to

authors. We persecuted the spies; and the spy-maniacs persecuted

us. They were always coming to us to say they had seen certain

persons who looked like spies. We vainly assured them that spies

do not look like spies. As a matter of fact, the enemy was pretty

ingenious in keeping the really suspicious character just out of

sight; sometimes by his being ordinary; sometimes actually by his

being extraordinary; one would be too small to be noticed, another

sono tutte sciocchezze, e il suo tentativo di rivoltarle contro di lui è

sciocchezza ancor peggiore. Finché lei aveva un’accusa seria da portare, le abbiamo dato

ogni opportunità di provarla. Se si mette a parlare di

cose che nessun vivente ha mai preso sul serio, tanto meno Gahagan,

le escludo.»

«Molto bene,» sbottò il signor Little, «la mia ultima domanda sarà assai

pratica. Se il capitano Gahagan ha fatto solo ciò che dice di aver fatto,

perché diavolo non l’ha detto? Perché è scomparso? Perché

l’indomani mattina se l’è svignata di buon’ora?»

Peter Gahagan sollevò a fatica la sua ampia figura dal sedile;

non guardò neppure l’avvocato; ma i suoi occhi erano fissi sul

vecchio pastore, con una profonda espressione di dolore.

«C’è una risposta a questo,» disse. «Ma preferirei di gran lunga

darla a chiunque tranne che al signor Whiteways.»

E, per quanto strano possa parere, nel momento in cui il signor Whiteways udì questo

rifiuto, si alzò anch’egli e tese la mano a Gahagan.

«Le credo,» disse. «È proprio quest’ultima frase che

mi ha fatto credere in lei.»

Il legale sprezzante, così abbandonato dal suo stesso cliente,

ricacciò le carte nella sua piccola borsa nera; e la

irregolare conferenza si sciolse.

Gahagan raccontò poi la verità sull’ultima domanda, alla

persona a cui raccontava tutto, a Joan Varney, con la quale era

fidanzato. E, per quanto suonasse strano, parve che ella capisse.

«Se preferisci metterla così,» disse, «non sono fuggito dalla

polizia; sono fuggito dalla ragazza. E so che suona folle; ma

sentivo davvero, in quel momento, di fare del mio meglio per lei, in una laida

situazione e tra un mucchio di laide alternative. Sapevo che l’indomani

mattina il vicario stava dicendo di avermi visto commettere un omicidio.

Supponi che lo avessi smentito — beh, tanto per cominciare, avrebbe dovuto

sapere che il suo vecchio amico, l’amico dei suoi animali, era un orribile

pazzo che le aveva rivolto una sorta di disgustoso insulto, nel

migliore dei casi.

«Ma non era solo quello. Mi ero comportato male quanto chiunque; ero

in una posizione vergognosamente falsa; e, se fossi rimasto, non ci sarebbe stato

davanti a noi altro che strisciare per tutto quel pantano di misera

spiegazione e disperato rimorso, in cui è difficile dire

se sia l’uomo o la donna ad averne la peggio. E poi un pensiero

bizzarro mi venne — un pensiero segreto, quasi subconscio; ma non

riuscivo a liberarmi di quell’idea. Supponi che lei continuasse a pensarci, e

ricordasse poi, in tempi più calmi, che un uomo ne aveva ucciso

un altro per lei. Ne sarebbe inorridita; ma non sarebbe stata

umiliata. Un folle bisbiglio continuava a ripetermi che alla lunga

lei sarebbe stata — un pochino fiera.»

«Credo che tu abbia ragione riguardo a lei,» disse Joan, col suo modo schietto.

«Ma, comunque, avresti dovuto dirle la verità.»

«Joan,» disse, «semplicemente non ne avevo il coraggio.»

«Lo so,» disse. «So anche tutto della tua D.S.O.;

e ti ho visto io stessa saltare un baratro che a me faceva star male solo a guardarlo.

Ma è proprio questo il guaio di tutti voi bei signori

combattenti.» La sua testa si sollevò appena. «Non avete il

coraggio.»

UNA STORIA ALTA

Stavano discutendo dei nuovi guai in Germania: i tre vecchi

amici, Sir Hubert Wotton, il celebre funzionario; il signor Pond, l’

oscuro funzionario; e il capitano Gahagan, che non fece mai un colpo di

lavoro nel senso di mettere penna su carta, ma amava inventare

le storie più fantastiche lì per lì. In questa

occasione, tuttavia, il gruppo era cresciuto a quattro; perché la

moglie di Gahagan era presente, una giovane donna dall’aria candida, con capelli

castano chiaro e occhi castano scuro. Si erano sposati solo da poco;

e la presenza di Joan Gahagan stimolava ancora il

capitano a slanci di esibizionismo piuttosto eccessivi.

Il capitano Gahagan pareva un bellimbusto della Reggenza; il signor Pond pareva un

pesce dagli occhi tondi, con la barba e la fronte di Socrate; Sir Hubert

Wotton pareva Sir Hubert Wotton — il che riassumeva una qualità assai solida e

virile in lui, per la quale i suoi amici nutrivano un grande rispetto.

«È una vergogna infame,» diceva Wotton, «il modo in cui questi individui

hanno trattato gli ebrei: ebrei perfettamente perbene e innocui, che erano

comunisti non più di quanto lo sia io; ometti che si erano fatti strada

per merito e operosità, tutti cacciati dai loro posti senza un

soldo di indennizzo. Certo che sei d’accordo con questo, Gahagan?»

«Certo che sì,» replicò Gahagan. «Non ho mai preso a calci un ebreo. Posso

distintamente ricordare tre occasioni e mezza in cui mi

astenni deliberatamente dal farlo. Quanto a tutte quelle centinaia e

migliaia di poveri piccoli violinisti e attori e scacchisti,

penso che sia stata una vergogna maledetta che fossero cacciati o

presi a calci in qualsiasi modo. Ma immagino che debbano prendersi a calci da soli, per

essere stati così fedeli alla Germania e persino, ovunque altrove,

piuttosto generalmente filotedeschi.»

«Anche questo si può esagerare,» disse il signor Pond. «Ricordate

il caso di Carl Schiller, avvenuto durante la Guerra? Fu

tutto tenuto piuttosto sotto silenzio, come ho ragione di sapere; perché la cosa

accadde, in un certo senso, nel mio ufficio. In genere ho trovato

le storie di spionaggio la più noiosa di tutte le forme di narrativa poliziesca; nelle mie

modeste ricerche nella letteratura leggera dell’omicidio,

le evito invariabilmente. Ma questa storia ebbe davvero un

finale inatteso e piuttosto sorprendente. Naturalmente, sapete che

in tempo di guerra il funzionario che si occupa di queste cose è assai

esposto ai dilettanti, come il Duca di Wellington era esposto agli

autori. Noi perseguitavamo le spie; e i maniaci delle spie perseguitavano

noi. Venivano sempre a dirci di aver visto certe

persone che parevano spie. Invano li assicuravamo che le spie

non hanno l’aria di spie. In verità, il nemico era piuttosto

ingegnoso nel tenere il personaggio davvero sospetto proprio fuori

vista; a volte facendolo comune; a volte, anzi, facendolo

straordinario; uno era troppo piccolo per essere notato, un altro

too tall to be seen; one was apparently paralysed in a hospital and

got out of the window at night—”

Joan looked across at him with a troubled expression in her honest

brown eyes.

“Please, Mr. Pond, do tell us what you mean by a man being too tall

to be seen.”

Gahagan’s spirits, already high, soared into laughter and light

improvisation.

“These things do happen, my dear girl,” he said. “I can throw out

a thousand instances that would meet the case. Take, for example,

the case of my unfortunate friends the Balham-Browns who lived at

Muswell Hill. Mr. Balham-Brown had just come home from the office

(of the Imperial and International Lead-Piping Company) and was

exercising the lawn-mower in the usual manner, when he noticed in

the grass a growth not green but reddish-brown and resembling

animal hair; nay, even human hair. My friend Mr. Pond, whose

private collection of Giant Whiskers is unrivalled (except, of

course, by the unique collection of Sir Samuel Snodd), was able to

identify it with the long hair of the Anakin; and judged by its

vigour, the son of Anak was buried but still alive. With the

spitefulness of the scientific world, Professor Pooter countered

with the theory that Jupiter buried the Titans, one under Etna,

another under Ossa, and a third under Muswell Hill. Anyhow, the

villa of my ill-fated friends the Balham-Browns was ruined, and the

whole suburb overturned as by an earthquake, in order to excavate

the monster. When his head alone emerged, it was like a colossal

sphinx; and Mrs. Balham-Brown complained to the authorities that

the face frightened her, because it was too large. Mr. Pond, who

happened to be passing at the moment, immediately produced a

paradox (of which he always carries a small supply) and said that,

on the contrary, they would soon find that the face was too small.

To cut a long story short—”

“Or a tall story shorter,” said Joan in a trenchant manner.

“When the Titan was extricated, he was so tall that by the common

converging laws of perspective, his head in the remote sky was a

mere dot. It was impossible to discern or recall one feature of

that old familiar face. He strode away; and fortunately decided to

walk across the Atlantic, where even he was apparently submerged.

It is believed that the unfortunate creature was going to give

lectures in America; driven by that mysterious instinct which leads

any person who is notorious for any reason to adopt that course.”

“Well, have you done?” demanded Joan. “We know all about you and

your yarns; and they don’t mean anything. But when Mr. Pond says

that somebody was too tall to be seen, he does mean something. And

what can he possibly mean?”

“Well,” said Mr. Pond, coughing slightly, “it was really a part of

the story to which I was alluding just now. I did not notice

anything odd about the expression when I used it; but I recognize,

on second thought, that it is, perhaps, a phrase requiring

explanation.” And he proceeded, in his slightly pedantic way, to

narrate the story which is now retold here.

It all happened in a fashionable watering-place, which was also a

famous seaport, and, therefore, naturally a place of concentration

for all the vigilance against spies, whether official or amateur.

Sir Hubert Wotton was in general charge of the district, but Mr.

Pond was in more practical though private occupation of the town,

watching events from a narrow house in a back street, an upper room

of which had been unobtrusively turned into an office; and he had

two assistants under him; a sturdy and very silent young man named

Butt, bull-necked and broad-shouldered, but quite short; and a much

taller and more talkative and elegant government-office clerk named

Travers, but referred to by nearly everybody as Arthur. The

stalwart Butt commonly occupied a desk on the ground floor,

watching the door and anyone who entered it; while Arthur Travers

worked in the office upstairs, where there were some very valuable

State papers, including the only plan of the mines in the harbour.

Mr. Pond himself always spent several hours in the office, but he

had more occasion than the others to pay visits in the town, and

had a general grasp of the neighbourhood. It was a very shabby

neighbourhood; indeed, it consisted of a few genteel, old-fashioned

houses, now mostly shuttered and empty, standing on the very edge

of a sort of slum of small houses, at that time riddled with what

is called Unrest in a degree very dangerous, especially in time of

war. Immediately outside his door, he found but few things that

could be called features in that featureless street; but there was

an old curiosity shop opposite, with a display of ancient Asiatic

weapons; and there was Mrs. Hartog-Haggard next door, more alarming

than all the weapons of the world.

Mrs. Hartog-Haggard was one of those persons, to be found here and

there, who look like the conventional caricature of the spinster,

though they are in fact excellent mothers of families. Rather in

the same way, she looked very like the sort of lady who is horribly

in earnest at Pacifist meetings; yet, as a matter of fact, she was

passionately patriotic, not to say militaristic. And, indeed, it

is often true that those two extremes lend themselves to the same

sort of fluent fanaticism. Poor Mr. Pond had reason to remember

the woeful day when he first saw her angular and agitated figure

darkening his doorway as she entered out of the street, peering

suspiciously through her curious square spectacles. There was

apparently some slight delay about her entrance; some repairs were

being done to the porch and some loose board or pole was not

removed sufficiently promptly from her path: was, in fact, as she

declared, removed reluctantly and in a grumbling spirit by the

troppo alto per essere visto; uno era in apparenza paralizzato in ospedale e

usciva dalla finestra di notte —»

Joan lo guardò con un’espressione turbata nei suoi onesti

occhi castani.

«La prego, signor Pond, ci dica cosa intende con un uomo troppo alto

per essere visto.»

L’umore di Gahagan, già alto, si librò in risate e leggera

improvvisazione.

«Queste cose accadono, mia cara ragazza,» disse. «Posso buttar là

mille esempi che calzerebbero al caso. Prendi, per esempio,

il caso dei miei sventurati amici i Balham-Brown che vivevano a

Muswell Hill. Il signor Balham-Brown era appena tornato a casa dall’ufficio

(della Imperial and International Lead-Piping Company) e stava

manovrando il tosaerba nel modo consueto, quando notò nell’

erba una crescita non verde ma rossiccia e somigliante a

pelo animale; anzi, persino a capelli umani. Il mio amico signor Pond, la cui

collezione privata di Baffi Giganti è impareggiabile (salvo, s’intende,

per l’unica collezione di Sir Samuel Snodd), fu in grado di

identificarla coi lunghi capelli degli Anakiti; e a giudicare dal loro

vigore, il figlio di Anak era sepolto ma ancora vivo. Con la

malevolenza del mondo scientifico, il professor Pooter controbatté

con la teoria che Giove seppellì i Titani, uno sotto l’Etna,

un altro sotto l’Ossa, e un terzo sotto Muswell Hill. Comunque, la

villa dei miei malaugurati amici i Balham-Brown fu distrutta, e l’

intero sobborgo sconvolto come da un terremoto, al fine di scavare

il mostro. Quando la sua testa soltanto emerse, era come una colossale

sfinge; e la signora Balham-Brown si lamentò con le autorità che

il volto la spaventava, perché era troppo grande. Il signor Pond, che

per caso passava in quel momento, produsse immediatamente un

paradosso (di cui porta sempre una piccola scorta) e disse che,

al contrario, presto avrebbero scoperto che il volto era troppo piccolo.

Per farla breve —»

«O per fare più corta una storia alta,» disse Joan in tono tagliente.

«Quando il Titano fu estratto, era così alto che per le

comuni leggi convergenti della prospettiva, la sua testa nel cielo remoto era

un mero puntino. Era impossibile discernere o rammentare un solo lineamento di

quel vecchio volto familiare. Se ne andò a grandi passi; e per fortuna decise di

attraversare a piedi l’Atlantico, dove persino lui parve sommerso.

Si ritiene che la sventurata creatura stesse andando a tenere

conferenze in America; spinta da quel misterioso istinto che induce

chiunque sia noto per una qualsiasi ragione ad adottare quel corso.»

«Ebbene, hai finito?» chiese Joan. «Sappiamo tutto di te e

delle tue frottole; e non significano nulla. Ma quando il signor Pond dice

che qualcuno era troppo alto per essere visto, egli intende qualcosa. E

cosa può mai intendere?»

«Ebbene,» disse il signor Pond, tossicchiando lievemente, «era in realtà una parte

della storia a cui alludevo poc’anzi. Non notai

nulla di strano nell’espressione quando la usai; ma riconosco,

ripensandoci, che è, forse, una frase che richiede

spiegazione.» E procedette, nel suo modo un po’ pedante, a

narrare la storia che qui viene ora ripetuta.

Tutto accadde in una stazione balneare alla moda, che era anche un

famoso porto di mare, e, perciò, naturalmente un luogo di concentrazione

per tutta la vigilanza contro le spie, tanto ufficiale quanto dilettantesca.

Sir Hubert Wotton aveva la responsabilità generale del distretto, ma il signor

Pond aveva un più pratico benché privato presidio della cittadina,

osservando gli eventi da una stretta casa in una via secondaria, una stanza superiore

della quale era stata discretamente trasformata in ufficio; e aveva

due assistenti sotto di sé; un giovane robusto e assai silenzioso di nome

Butt, dal collo taurino e dalle spalle larghe, ma piuttosto basso; e un

impiegato d’un ufficio governativo assai più alto, loquace ed elegante, di nome

Travers, ma da quasi tutti chiamato Arthur. Il

gagliardo Butt occupava comunemente una scrivania al pianterreno,

sorvegliando la porta e chiunque vi entrasse; mentre Arthur Travers

lavorava nell’ufficio di sopra, dove c’erano certe assai preziose

carte di Stato, compreso l’unico piano delle mine nel porto.

Il signor Pond stesso trascorreva sempre parecchie ore nell’ufficio, ma

aveva più occasione degli altri di fare visite in città, e

aveva una conoscenza generale del vicinato. Era un vicinato assai

malandato; anzi, consisteva di poche case eleganti, all’antica,

ora per lo più con le imposte chiuse e vuote, poste sull’orlo stesso

d’una specie di catapecchie di casupole, a quel tempo rose da ciò

che si chiama Malcontento in un grado assai pericoloso, specie in tempo di

guerra. Immediatamente fuori dalla sua porta, trovava ben poche cose che

potessero dirsi caratteristiche in quella via senza caratteristiche; ma c’era

un vecchio negozio di curiosità di fronte, con un’esposizione di antiche armi

asiatiche; e c’era la signora Hartog-Haggard della porta accanto, più allarmante

di tutte le armi del mondo.

La signora Hartog-Haggard era una di quelle persone, che si trovano qua e

là, che paiono la convenzionale caricatura della zitella,

benché in realtà siano eccellenti madri di famiglia. Piuttosto allo

stesso modo, somigliava assai al tipo di signora che è orribilmente

infervorata alle riunioni pacifiste; eppure, in verità, era

appassionatamente patriottica, per non dire militarista. E, in effetti,

è spesso vero che quei due estremi si prestano allo stesso

genere di fluente fanatismo. Il povero signor Pond aveva ragione di ricordare

il giorno doloroso in cui vide per la prima volta la sua figura angolosa e agitata

oscurare la sua soglia mentre entrava dalla strada, scrutando

con sospetto attraverso i suoi curiosi occhiali quadrati. Vi fu

apparentemente un certo lieve ritardo al suo ingresso; si stavano facendo alcune riparazioni

al portico e qualche asse o palo allentato non fu

rimosso abbastanza prontamente dal suo cammino: fu, anzi, come ella

dichiarò, rimosso con riluttanza e in spirito brontolone dagli

workmen employed on the job; and by the time she had reached the

responsible official, a theory had fully formed and hardened in her

mind.

“That man is a SOCIALIST, Mr. Pond,” she declared in the ear of

that unfortunate functionary. “I heard him with my own ears mutter

something about what his Trade Union would say. What is he doing

so near to your office?”

“We must distinguish,” said Mr. Pond. “A Trade Unionist, even a

militant Trade Unionist, is not necessarily a Socialist; a

Socialist is not necessarily a Pacifist, still less a Pro-German.

In my opinion, the chief S.D.F. men are the most extreme Marxians

in England; and they are all out for the Allies. One of the Dock

Strike leaders is in a mood to make recruiting speeches all over

the Empire.”

“I’m sure he’s not English; he doesn’t look a bit English,” said

the lady, still thinking of her wicked proletarian without.

“Thank you, Mrs. Hartog-Haggard,” said Pond, patiently. “I will

certainly make a note of your warning and see that inquiries are

made about it.”

And so he did, with the laborious precision of one who could not

leave any loophole unguarded. Certainly the man did not look very

English; though perhaps rather Scandinavian than German. His name

was Peterson: it was possible that it was really Petersen. But

that was not all. Mr. Pond had learned the last lesson of the wise

man: that the fool is sometimes right.

He soon forgot the incident in the details of his work; and next

day it was with a start that he looked up from his desk, or rather

from Mr. Butt’s desk which he was using at the moment, and saw once

again the patriotic lady hovering like an avenging shadow in the

doorway. This time she glided swiftly in, unchecked by any

Socialist barricade, and warned him that she had news of the most

terrible kind. She seemed to have forgotten all about her last

suspicions; and, in truth, her new ones were naturally more

important to her. This time she had warmed the viper on her own

hearth. She had suddenly become conscious of the existence of her

own German governess, whom she had never especially noticed before.

Pond himself had noticed the alien in question with rather more

attention; he had seen her, a dumpy lady with pale hair, returning

with Mrs. Hartog-Haggard’s three little girls and one little boy

from the pantomime of Puss-in-Boots that was being performed on the

pier. He had even heard her instructing her charges, and saying

something educational about a folk-tale; and had smiled faintly at

that touch of Teutonic pedantry that talks about a folk-tale when

we would talk about a fairy-tale. But he knew a good deal about

the lady; and saw no reason to move in the matter.

“She shuts herself up for hours in her room and won’t come out,”

Mrs. Hartog-Haggard was already breathing hoarsely in his ear. “Do

you think she is signalling, or does she climb down the fire-

escape? What do you think it means, Mr. Pond?”

“Hysterics,” said Mr. Pond. “What, do you think the poor lady

cannot be hysterical, because she does not scream the house down?

But any doctor will tell you that hysteria is mostly secretive and

silent. And there really is a vein of hysteria in a great many of

the Germans; it is at the very opposite extreme to the external

excitability of the Latins. No, madam, I do not think she is

climbing down the fire-escape. I think she is saying that her

pupils do not love her, and thinking about weltschmerz and suicide.

And really, poor woman, she is in a very hard position.”

“She won’t come to family prayers,” continued the patriotic matron,

not to be turned from her course, “because we pray for a British

victory.”

“You had better pray,” said Mr. Pond, “for all the unhappy

Englishwomen stranded in Germany by poverty or duty or dependence.

If she loves her native land, it only shows she is a human being.

If she expresses it by ostentatious absences or sulks or banging

doors, that may show she is too much of a German. It also shows

she is not much of a German spy.”

Here again, however, Mr. Pond was careful not to ignore or entirely

despise the warning; he kept an eye on the German governess, and

even engaged that learned lady in talk upon some trivial pretext—

if anything she touched could remain trivial.

“Your study of our national drama,” he said gravely, “must

sometimes recall to you the greatest and noblest work that ever

came out of Germany.”

“You refer to Goethe’s Faust, I presume,” she replied.

“I refer to Grimm’s Fairy-Tales,” said Mr. Pond. “I fear I have

forgotten for the moment whether the story we call Puss-in-Boots

exists in Grimm’s collection in the same form; but I am pretty

certain there is some variant of it. It always seems to me about

the best story in the world.”

The German governess obliged him with a short lecture on the

parallelism of folk-lore; and Pond could not help feeling faintly

amused at the idea of this ethnological and scientific treatment of

a folk-tale which had just been presented on the pier by Miss Patsy

Pickles, in lights and various other embellishments, supported by

that world-famed comedian who called himself Alberto Tizzi and was

born in the Blackfriars Road.

When he returned to his office at twilight, and, turning, beheld

the figure of Mrs. Hartog-Haggard again hovering without, Mr. Pond

began to think he was in a nightmare. He wondered wildly whether

she had drawn some dark conclusions from his own meeting with the

Teutonic teacher of youth. Perhaps he, Mr. Pond, was a German spy,

too. But he ought to have known his neighbour better; for when

Mrs. Hartog-Haggard spoke she had once again forgotten, for the

moment, her last cause of complaint. But she was more excited than

ever; she ducked under the frame of scaffolding and darted into the

operai impiegati nel lavoro; e quando ebbe tempo di raggiungere il

funzionario responsabile, una teoria si era pienamente formata e indurita nella sua

mente.

«Quell’uomo è un SOCIALISTA, signor Pond,» dichiarò all’orecchio di

quello sventurato funzionario. «L’ho sentito con le mie stesse orecchie borbottare

qualcosa su cosa avrebbe detto il suo Sindacato. Cosa fa

così vicino al suo ufficio?»

«Dobbiamo distinguere,» disse il signor Pond. «Un sindacalista, anche un

sindacalista militante, non è necessariamente un socialista; un

socialista non è necessariamente un pacifista, tanto meno un filotedesco.

A mio avviso, i capi principali della S.D.F. sono i marxisti più

estremi d’Inghilterra; e sono tutti a favore degli Alleati. Uno dei capi

dello Sciopero dei Docker è dell’umore di tenere discorsi di arruolamento in tutto

l’Impero.»

«Sono sicura che non è inglese; non ha affatto l’aria inglese,» disse

la signora, ancora pensando al suo malvagio proletario di fuori.

«Grazie, signora Hartog-Haggard,» disse Pond, con pazienza. «Prenderò

certamente nota del suo avvertimento e farò in modo che si conducano

indagini in merito.»

E così fece, con la laboriosa precisione di chi non poteva

lasciare senza guardia alcun varco. Certamente l’uomo non aveva l’aria molto

inglese; benché forse più scandinava che tedesca. Il suo nome

era Peterson: era possibile che fosse in realtà Petersen. Ma

non era tutto. Il signor Pond aveva appreso l’ultima lezione del saggio:

che lo sciocco a volte ha ragione.

Presto dimenticò l’incidente nei dettagli del suo lavoro; e il giorno

dopo fu con un sussulto che alzò lo sguardo dalla sua scrivania, o piuttosto

dalla scrivania del signor Butt che stava usando in quel momento, e vide di

nuovo la patriottica signora aleggiare come un’ombra vendicatrice nel

vano della porta. Questa volta scivolò dentro rapida, non fermata da alcuna

barricata socialista, e lo avvertì che aveva notizie del genere

più terribile. Pareva aver dimenticato tutto delle sue ultime

sospettosità; e, in verità, le sue nuove erano naturalmente più

importanti per lei. Questa volta aveva scaldato la vipera sul proprio

focolare. Si era d’improvviso resa conto dell’esistenza della

propria istitutrice tedesca, che non aveva mai particolarmente notato prima.

Pond stesso aveva notato la straniera in questione con un po’ più di

attenzione; l’aveva vista, una signora tozza dai capelli pallidi, tornare

con le tre bambine e il bambino della signora Hartog-Haggard

dalla pantomima del Gatto con gli Stivali che si dava sul

molo. Aveva persino udito lei istruire i suoi pupilli, e dire

qualcosa di educativo su una fiaba popolare; e aveva sorriso debolmente a

quel tocco di pedanteria teutonica che parla di fiaba popolare quando

noi parleremmo di favola. Ma sapeva parecchio della

signora; e non vedeva ragione di muoversi nella faccenda.

«Si chiude in camera per ore e non vuole uscire,»

la signora Hartog-Haggard gli stava già ansimando roca all’orecchio. «Crede

che stia facendo segnali, o scende per la scala antincendio?

Cosa crede che significhi, signor Pond?»

«Isteria,» disse il signor Pond. «Come, crede che la povera signora

non possa essere isterica, perché non urla facendo tremare la casa?

Ma qualsiasi medico le dirà che l’isteria è per lo più segreta e

silenziosa. E c’è davvero una vena d’isteria in moltissimi

tedeschi; è all’estremo opposto dell’eccitabilità esteriore

dei latini. No, signora, non credo che stia

scendendo per la scala antincendio. Credo che stia dicendo che i suoi

allievi non l’amano, e pensando al weltschmerz e al suicidio.

E davvero, povera donna, si trova in una posizione assai difficile.»

«Non viene alle preghiere in famiglia,» proseguì la patriottica matrona,

non lasciandosi distogliere dal suo corso, «perché noi preghiamo per una vittoria

britannica.»

«Farebbe meglio a pregare,» disse il signor Pond, «per tutte le infelici

inglesi bloccate in Germania dalla povertà o dal dovere o dalla dipendenza.

Se ella ama la sua terra natia, ciò mostra soltanto che è un essere umano.

Se lo esprime con ostentate assenze o musi o sbattere di

porte, ciò può mostrare che è troppo tedesca. Mostra anche

che non è granché come spia tedesca.»

Anche qui, tuttavia, il signor Pond ebbe cura di non ignorare né del tutto

disprezzare l’avvertimento; tenne d’occhio l’istitutrice tedesca, e

perfino ingaggiò quella dotta signora in una conversazione con un pretesto banale —

ammesso che qualcosa da lei toccato potesse restare banale.

«Il suo studio del nostro dramma nazionale,» disse gravemente, «deve

talvolta richiamarle alla mente la più grande e nobile opera mai

uscita dalla Germania.»

«Lei allude al Faust di Goethe, presumo,» ella replicò.

«Alludo alle Fiabe di Grimm,» disse il signor Pond. «Temo di aver

dimenticato per il momento se la storia che chiamiamo Gatto con gli Stivali

esista nella raccolta di Grimm nella stessa forma; ma sono abbastanza

certo che ne esista qualche variante. Mi pare sempre press’a poco

la migliore storia del mondo.»

L’istitutrice tedesca lo compiacque con una breve conferenza sul

parallelismo del folklore; e Pond non poté fare a meno di sentirsi debolmente

divertito all’idea di questo trattamento etnologico e scientifico d’una

fiaba popolare che era appena stata presentata sul molo dalla signorina Patsy

Pickles, in luci e vari altri ornamenti, sostenuta da

quel comico di fama mondiale che si faceva chiamare Alberto Tizzi ed era

nato nella Blackfriars Road.

Quando tornò al suo ufficio all’imbrunire, e, voltandosi, scorse

la figura della signora Hartog-Haggard di nuovo aleggiare fuori, il signor Pond

cominciò a credere di essere in un incubo. Si chiese follemente se

ella avesse tratto qualche oscura conclusione dal suo stesso incontro con la

teutonica maestra di gioventù. Forse anche lui, il signor Pond, era una spia

tedesca. Ma avrebbe dovuto conoscere meglio la sua vicina; perché quando

la signora Hartog-Haggard parlò aveva ancora una volta dimenticato, per il

momento, il suo ultimo motivo di lagnanza. Ma era più eccitata che

mai; si chinò sotto l’intelaiatura dell’impalcatura e si precipitò nella

room, crying out as she came:

“Mr. Pond, do you know what is right opposite your own house?”

“Well, I think so,” said Mr. Pond, doubtfully, “more or less.”

“I never read the name over the shop before!” cried the lady. “You

know it is all dark and dirty and obliterated—that curiosity shop,

I mean; with all the spears and daggers. Think of the impudence of

the man! He’s actually written up his name there: ‘C. Schiller.’”

“He’s written up C. Schiller; I’m not so sure he’s written up his

name,” said Mr. Pond.

“Do you mean,” she cried, “that you actually know he goes by two

names? Why, that makes it worse than ever!”

“Well,” said Mr. Pond, rising suddenly, and with a curtness that

cut all his own courtesy, “I’ll see what I can do about it.”

And for the third time did Mr. Pond take some steps to verify the

Hartog-Haggard revelations. He took the ten or twelve steps

necessary to take him across the road and into the shop of C.

Schiller, amid all the shining sabres and yataghans. It was a very

peaceable-looking person who waited behind all this array of arms;

not to say a rather smooth and sleek one; and Pond, leaning across

the counter, addressed him in a low and confidential voice.

“Why the dickens do you people do it? It will be more than half

your own fault if there’s a row of some kind and a Jingo mob comes

here and breaks your windows for your absurd German name. I know

very well this is no quarrel of yours. I am well aware,” Mr. Pond

continued with an earnest gaze, “that you never invaded Belgium. I

am fully conscious that your national tastes do not lie in that

direction. I know you had nothing to do with burning the Louvain

Library or sinking the Lusitania. Then why the devil can’t you say

so? Why can’t you call yourself Levy, like your fathers before you—

your fathers who go back to the most ancient priesthood of the

world? And you’ll get into trouble with the Germans, too, some

day, if you go about calling yourself Schiller. You might as well

go and live in Stratford-on-Avon and call yourself Shakespeare.”

“There’th a lot of prejudith againth my rathe,” said the warden of

the armoury.

“There’ll be a lot more, unless you take my advice,” said Mr. Pond

with unusual brevity; and left the shop to return to the office.

The square figure of Mr. Butt, who was sitting at the desk looking

towards the doorway, rose at his entrance; but Pond waved him to

his seat again and, lighting a cigarette, began to moon about the

room in a rather moody fashion. He did not believe that there was

anything very much in any of the three avenues of suspicion that

had been opened to him; though he owned that there were indirect

possibilities about the last. Mr. Levy was certainly not a German;

and it was very improbable that he was a real enthusiast for

Germany; but it was not altogether impossible to suppose, in the

tangle and distraction of all the modern international muddle, that

he might be some sort of tool, conscious or unconscious, of a real

German conspiracy. So long as that was possible, he must be

watched. Mr. Pond was very glad that Mr. Levy lived in the shop

exactly opposite.

Indeed, he found himself gazing across the street in the gathering

dusk with feelings which he found it hard to analyse. He could

still see the shop, with its pattern of queer, archaic weapons,

through the frame of the last few poles left in the low scaffolding

round the porch; for the workmen’s business had been entirely

limited to the porch itself and the props were mostly cleared away,

the work being practically over; but there was just enough

suggestion of a cluster or network of lines to confuse the prospect

at that very confusing turn of the twilight. Once he fancied he

saw something flicker behind them, as if a shadow had shifted; and

there arose within him the terror of Mrs. Hartog-Haggard, which is

the terror of boredom and a sort of paralysed impatience, one of

the worst of the woes of life.

Then he saw that the shifting shadow must have been produced by the

fact that the lights had been turned up in the shop opposite; and

he saw again, and now much more clearly, the queer outline of all

those alien Asiatic weapons, the crooked darts and monstrous

missiles, the swords with a horrid resemblance to hooks or the

blades that bent back and forth like snakes of iron… . He

became dreamily conscious of the chasm between Christendom and that

great other half of human civilization; so dreamily that he hardly

knew which was a torture implement and which was a tool. Whether

the thought was mingled with his own belief that he was fighting a

barbarism at heart as hostile, or whether he had caught a whiff of

the strange smell of the East from that apparently harmless human

accident who kept the shop, he could hardly be certain himself; but

he felt the peculiar oppression of his work as he had never felt it

before.

Then he shook himself awake, telling himself sharply that his

business was working and not worrying about the atmosphere of the

work; and that he should be ashamed to idle when his two

subordinates were still busy, Butt behind him, and Travers in the

office above. He was all the more surprised, when he turned

sharply around, to find that Butt was not working at all; but, like

himself, was staring, not to say glaring, as in a congested

mystification, into the twilight. Butt was commonly the most calm

and prosaic of subordinates; but the look on his face was quite

enough to prove that something was really the matter.

“Is anything bothering you?” asked Pond, in a gentle voice which

people found very encouraging.

“Yes, sir,” said Mr. Butt. “I’m bothering about whether I’m going

to be a beast or not. It’s a beastly caddish thing to say a word,

or hint a word, against your comrades or anybody connected with

stanza, esclamando mentre entrava:

«Signor Pond, sa cosa c’è proprio di fronte alla sua stessa casa?»

«Ebbene, credo di sì,» disse il signor Pond, con esitazione, «più o meno.»

«Non avevo mai letto prima il nome sopra la bottega!» esclamò la signora. «Lo

sa che è tutto scuro e sudicio e cancellato — quel negozio di curiosità,

intendo; con tutte le lance e i pugnali. Pensi all’impudenza di

quell’uomo! Ha effettivamente scritto lassù il suo nome: ‘C. Schiller.’»

«Ha scritto C. Schiller; non sono così sicuro che abbia scritto il suo

nome,» disse il signor Pond.

«Vuol dire,» esclamò lei, «che lei sa davvero che va sotto due

nomi? Ma questo lo rende peggiore che mai!»

«Ebbene,» disse il signor Pond, alzandosi d’improvviso, e con una secchezza che

tagliò corto a tutta la sua cortesia, «vedrò cosa posso farci.»

E per la terza volta il signor Pond mosse qualche passo per verificare le

rivelazioni Hartog-Haggard. Fece i dieci o dodici passi

necessari a portarlo dall’altra parte della strada e dentro la bottega di C.

Schiller, in mezzo a tutte le lucenti sciabole e yatagan. Era una persona

dall’aria assai pacifica quella che attendeva dietro tutto questo schieramento d’armi;

per non dire piuttosto liscia e untuosa; e Pond, chinandosi oltre

il bancone, gli si rivolse con voce bassa e confidenziale.

«Perché diamine lo fate, voialtri? Sarà più di metà

colpa vostra se ci sarà una qualche zuffa e una plebaglia sciovinista verrà

qui a rompervi i vetri per il vostro assurdo nome tedesco. So

benissimo bene che questa non è una vostra querela. Sono ben consapevole,» proseguì il signor Pond

con uno sguardo intenso, «che voi non avete mai invaso il Belgio. Sono

pienamente cosciente che i vostri gusti nazionali non vanno in quella

direzione. So che non avete avuto nulla a che fare col rogo della Biblioteca

di Lovanio o con l’affondamento del Lusitania. Allora perché diavolo non lo

dite? Perché non vi chiamate Levy, come i vostri padri prima di voi —

i vostri padri che risalgono al più antico sacerdozio del

mondo? E vi metterete nei guai anche coi tedeschi, un

giorno, se andate in giro a chiamarvi Schiller. Tanto varrebbe allora

andare a vivere a Stratford-on-Avon e chiamarvi Shakespeare.»

«C’è un mucchio di pregiudithio contro la mia raztha,» disse il custode dell’

armeria.

«Ce ne sarà molto di più, se non date retta al mio consiglio,» disse il signor Pond

con insolita brevità; e lasciò la bottega per tornare all’ufficio.

La figura squadrata del signor Butt, che sedeva alla scrivania guardando

verso il vano della porta, si alzò al suo ingresso; ma Pond gli fece cenno di

tornare al suo posto e, accendendo una sigaretta, cominciò a gironzolare per la

stanza in un modo piuttosto tetro. Non credeva che ci fosse

granché in nessuna delle tre vie di sospetto che gli

erano state aperte; benché ammettesse che c’erano indirette

possibilità riguardo all’ultima. Il signor Levy non era certamente un tedesco;

ed era assai improbabile che fosse un vero entusiasta della

Germania; ma non era del tutto impossibile supporre, nell’

intrico e nella distrazione di tutto il moderno guazzabuglio internazionale, che

egli potesse essere una sorta di strumento, conscio o inconscio, d’una vera

cospirazione tedesca. Finché ciò era possibile, doveva essere

sorvegliato. Il signor Pond era assai lieto che il signor Levy vivesse nella bottega

esattamente di fronte.

Anzi, si ritrovò a fissare dall’altra parte della strada nel crescente

crepuscolo con sentimenti che gli riusciva difficile analizzare. Poteva

ancora vedere la bottega, col suo disegno di strane, arcaiche armi,

attraverso l’intelaiatura degli ultimi pochi pali rimasti nella bassa impalcatura

intorno al portico; perché il lavoro degli operai si era limitato

interamente al portico stesso e i puntelli erano per lo più stati tolti,

essendo l’opera praticamente finita; ma c’era appena abbastanza

suggerimento d’un intrico o d’una rete di linee da confondere la prospettiva

in quella confondentissima svolta del crepuscolo. Una volta gli parve di

vedere qualcosa guizzare dietro di esse, come se un’ombra si fosse spostata; e

sorse in lui il terrore della signora Hartog-Haggard, che è

il terrore della noia e una sorta di paralizzata impazienza, uno dei

peggiori mali della vita.

Poi vide che l’ombra mobile doveva essere stata prodotta dal

fatto che nella bottega di fronte erano state accese le luci; e

vide di nuovo, e ora assai più chiaramente, la strana sagoma di tutte

quelle aliene armi asiatiche, i dardi ricurvi e i mostruosi

proiettili, le spade con un’orribile somiglianza a uncini o le

lame che si piegavano avanti e indietro come serpenti di ferro… . Divenne

sognantemente cosciente dell’abisso tra la Cristianità e quella

grande altra metà della civiltà umana; così sognantemente che a stento

sapeva quale fosse uno strumento di tortura e quale un utensile. Se

il pensiero fosse mescolato alla sua stessa convinzione di star combattendo una

barbarie in cuore tanto ostile, o se avesse colto una zaffata

dello strano odore d’Oriente da quell’apparentemente innocuo accidente

umano che teneva la bottega, egli a stento poteva esserne certo; ma

sentì la peculiare oppressione del suo lavoro come non l’aveva mai sentita

prima.

Poi si riscosse, dicendosi bruscamente che il suo

compito era lavorare e non preoccuparsi dell’atmosfera del

lavoro; e che dovrebbe vergognarsi di oziare quando i suoi due

subordinati erano ancora indaffarati, Butt dietro di lui, e Travers nell’

ufficio di sopra. Fu tanto più sorpreso, quando si voltò

di scatto, di trovare che Butt non lavorava affatto; ma, come

lui stesso, fissava, per non dire sbarrava gli occhi, come in un congesto

smarrimento, nel crepuscolo. Butt era comunemente il più calmo

e prosaico dei subordinati; ma l’espressione sul suo volto era proprio

sufficiente a dimostrare che qualcosa non andava davvero.

«C’è qualcosa che la turba?» chiese Pond, con voce gentile che

la gente trovava assai incoraggiante.

«Sì, signore,» disse il signor Butt. «Mi turba il pensiero se sto per

essere una carogna o no. È una cosa vile e volgare dire una parola,

o insinuare una parola, contro i vostri compagni o chiunque sia legato a

them. But after all—well, sir, there is the country, isn’t

there?”

“There is certainly the country,” said Mr. Pond, very seriously.

“Well,” Butt blurted out at last, “I’m not a bit comfortable about

Arthur.”

Then, after a sort of gasp, he tried again: “At least, it isn’t so

much Arthur as Arthur’s … what Arthur’s doing. It makes it all

the nastier to have put it like that. But you know he got engaged

last week. Have you met his fiancée, sir?”

“I have not yet had the honour,” replied Pond, in his punctilious

way.

“Well, sir, Arthur brought her in here to-day while you were out;

he’d just taken her to the pantomime of Puss-in-Boots on the pier,

and they were laughing like anything. Of course, that’s quite all

right; it was his off time; but it seemed to me it wasn’t quite all

right that she walked straight upstairs without any invitation,

even from him, to the private office where we don’t allow visitors

to go. Of course, that’s about the only possible case where I

could hardly prevent it. In the ordinary way, we’re perfectly

safe; I mean the documents are perfectly safe. There’s only one

door, and you or I are always sitting bang in front of it; and

there’s only one staircase, and nobody uses it but we three. Of

course, she might have done it in all innocence; that’s what made

it seem quite too ghastly to snub her. And yet… . Well, she’s

a very nice-looking girl, and no doubt a very nice girl; but

somehow that’s just the one word that wouldn’t jump to my mind

about her—innocence.”

“Why, what sort of a girl is she?” asked Pond.

“Well,” said Mr. Butt, gloomily seeking words, “we all know that

making-up and even dyeing your hair doesn’t mean what it once did;

lots of women do it who are perfectly decent; but not those who

are—well, utterly inexperienced. It seemed to me that, while she

might be perfectly honest, she WOULD know very decidedly whether a

thing is done or not.”

“If she is engaged to him,” said Pond, with a rather unusual

severity, “she must know that he is here on highly confidential

work, and she must be as anxious to protect his honour as we are.

I’m afraid that I shall have to ask you for some sort of

description.”

“Well,” said Butt, “she’s very tall and elegant, or … no,

elegant is exactly the word. She has beautiful golden hair—very

beautiful golden hair—and very beautiful long dark eyes that make

it look rather like a gilded wig. She has high cheekbones, not in

the way that Scotch girls have, but somehow as if it were part of

the shape of the skull; and though she’s not at all long in the

tooth, in any sense, her teeth are just a little to the fore.”

“Did he meet her in Besançon, near Belfort?”

“Pretty rum you should say that,” said Butt, miserably; “because he

did.”

Mr. Pond received the news in silence.

“I hope, sir, you won’t assume anything against Arthur,” said Butt,

huskily. “I’m sure I’d do anything to clear him of any—”

As he spoke, the ceiling above them shook with a thud like thunder;

then there was a sound of scampering feet; and then utter

stillness. No one acquainted with Mr. Pond’s usual process of

ambulation could have believed that he flew up the staircase as he

did just then.

They flung open the door, and they saw all that was to be seen.

All that was to be seen was Arthur Travers stretched out face

downwards on the ground, and between his shoulder-blades stood out

the very long hilt of a very strange-looking sword. Butt

impetuously laid hold of it, and was startled to find that it was

sunk so deep in the corpse and the carpeted floor that he could not

have plucked it out without the most violent muscular effort. Pond

had already touched the wrist and felt the rigidity of the muscles

and he waved his subordinate away.

“I am sorry to say that our friend is certainly dead,” he said

steadily. “In that case, you had better not touch things till they

can be properly examined.” Then, looking at Butt very solemnly, he

added:

“You said you would do anything to clear him. One thing is

certain: that he is quite cleared.”

Pond then walked in silence to the desk, which contained the secret

drawer and the secret plan of the harbour. He only compressed his

lips when he saw that the drawer was empty.

Pond walked to the telephone and issued orders to about six

different people. He did about twenty things, but he did not speak

again for about three-quarters of an hour. It was only about the

same time that the stunned and bewildered Butt stumbled into

speech.

“I simply can’t make head or tail of anything. That woman had

gone; and, besides, no woman could have nailed him to the floor

like that.”

“And with such an extraordinary nail,” said Pond, and was silent

once more.

And indeed the riddle revolved more and more on the one thing that

thief and murderer had left behind him: the enormous misshapen

weapon. It was not difficult to guess why he had left it behind;

it was so difficult to tug out of the floor that he probably had no

time to try effectually, hearing Pond clattering up the stairs; he

thought it wiser to escape somehow, presumably through the window.

But about the nature of the thing itself it was hard to say

anything, for it seemed quite abnormal. It was as long as a

claymore; yet it was not upon the pattern of any known sword. It

had no guard or pommel of any kind. The hilt was as long as the

blade; the blade was twice as broad as the hilt; at least, at its

base, whence it tapered to a point in a sort of right-angled

triangle, only the outer edge or hypotenuse being sharpened. Pond

gazed musingly at this uncouth weapon, which was made very rudely

of iron and wood painted with garish colours; and his thoughts

loro. Ma in fondo… beh, signore, c’è la campagna, no,

non è vero?”

“C’è certamente la campagna,” disse il signor Pond, molto seriamente.

“Beh,” sbottò infine Butt, “non sono per niente tranquillo riguardo ad

Arthur.”

Poi, dopo una specie di rantolo, riprovò: “Almeno, non è tanto

Arthur quanto ciò che è di Arthur… ciò che Arthur sta facendo. Rende tutto

più sgradevole averlo detto così. Ma sa che si è fidanzato

la settimana scorsa. Ha conosciuto la sua promessa sposa, signore?”

“Non ne ho ancora avuto l’onore,” rispose Pond, nel suo modo

puntiglioso.

“Beh, signore, Arthur l’ha portata qui oggi mentre lei era fuori;

l’aveva appena accompagnata alla pantomima del Gatto con gli Stivali sul molo,

e ridevano a più non posso. Certo, va benissimo

così; era il suo tempo libero; ma mi è parso non fosse del tutto

opportuno che salisse dritta di sopra senza alcun invito,

nemmeno da parte sua, fino all’ufficio privato dove non lasciamo entrare i visitatori.

Certo, è più o meno l’unico caso possibile in cui

difficilmente potevo impedirlo. In via ordinaria, siamo perfettamente

al sicuro; intendo che i documenti sono perfettamente al sicuro. C’è una sola

porta, e lei o io siamo sempre seduti proprio davanti ad essa; e

c’è una sola scala, e nessuno la usa tranne noi tre. Certo,

potrebbe averlo fatto in tutta innocenza; è questo che rendeva

troppo orribile rimbeccarla. Eppure… beh, è

una ragazza di bell’aspetto, e senza dubbio una brava ragazza; ma

chissà perché è proprio l’unica parola che non mi verrebbe in mente

sul suo conto… innocenza.”

“Ma che tipo di ragazza è?” chiese Pond.

“Beh,” disse il signor Butt, cercando cupo le parole, “sappiamo tutti che

truccarsi e persino tingersi i capelli non significa più ciò che significava un tempo;

lo fanno molte donne perfettamente per bene; ma non quelle che

sono… beh, del tutto inesperte. Mi è parso che, per quanto lei

potesse essere perfettamente onesta, sapesse molto bene se una

cosa si fa o non si fa.”

“Se è fidanzata con lui,” disse Pond, con una severità piuttosto

insolita, “deve sapere che è qui per un lavoro altamente confidenziale,

e deve essere ansiosa di proteggerne l’onore quanto lo siamo noi.

Temo che dovrò chiederle una qualche

descrizione.”

“Beh,” disse Butt, “è molto alta ed elegante, o… no,

elegante è esattamente la parola. Ha bellissimi capelli d’oro… bellissimi

capelli d’oro… e bellissimi lunghi occhi scuri che lo fanno

sembrare quasi una parrucca dorata. Ha zigomi alti, non

alla maniera delle ragazze scozzesi, ma in qualche modo come se fossero parte

della forma del cranio; e benché non abbia affatto i denti

lunghi, in nessun senso, i suoi denti sporgono appena un poco.”

“L’ha conosciuta a Besançon, vicino a Belfort?”

“È ben strano che lo dica,” disse Butt, avvilito; “perché è proprio

così.”

Il signor Pond ricevette la notizia in silenzio.

“Spero, signore, che non presuma nulla contro Arthur,” disse Butt,

con voce rauca. “Sono certo che farei di tutto per scagionarlo da qualsiasi…”

Mentre parlava, il soffitto sopra di loro tremò con un tonfo simile a un tuono;

poi vi fu un rumore di piedi in fuga; e poi assoluta

immobilità. Nessuno che conoscesse il consueto incedere del signor Pond

avrebbe potuto credere che volasse su per le scale come

fece in quel momento.

Spalancarono la porta, e videro tutto ciò che c’era da vedere.

Tutto ciò che c’era da vedere era Arthur Travers steso a faccia

in giù sul pavimento, e tra le scapole sporgeva

l’elsa lunghissima di una spada dall’aspetto quanto mai strano. Butt

vi mise mano impetuosamente, e si stupì di scoprire che era

conficcata così a fondo nel cadavere e nel pavimento a moquette che non

avrebbe potuto estrarla senza il più violento sforzo muscolare. Pond

aveva già toccato il polso e sentito la rigidità dei muscoli,

e allontanò con un gesto il suo subordinato.

“Mi dispiace dire che il nostro amico è certamente morto,” disse

con fermezza. “In tal caso, è meglio che non tocchi nulla finché non

potrà essere esaminato a dovere.” Poi, guardando Butt molto solennemente,

aggiunse:

“Ha detto che avrebbe fatto di tutto per scagionarlo. Una cosa è

certa: che è del tutto scagionato.”

Pond si diresse quindi in silenzio alla scrivania, che conteneva il cassetto

segreto e la pianta segreta del porto. Si limitò a serrare le

labbra quando vide che il cassetto era vuoto.

Pond andò al telefono e impartì ordini a circa sei

persone diverse. Fece una ventina di cose, ma non parlò

più per circa tre quarti d’ora. Fu solo verso lo stesso

momento che lo stordito e sconcertato Butt inciampò nelle

parole.

“Non riesco proprio a raccapezzarmi. Quella donna se n’era

andata; e, per giunta, nessuna donna avrebbe potuto inchiodarlo al pavimento

in quel modo.”

“E con un chiodo così straordinario,” disse Pond, e tacque

di nuovo.

E in effetti l’enigma ruotava sempre più intorno all’unica cosa che

ladro e assassino si era lasciato dietro: l’enorme, deforme

arma. Non era difficile indovinare perché l’avesse abbandonata;

era così difficile da svellere dal pavimento che probabilmente non ebbe

tempo di provarci davvero, sentendo Pond salire fragorosamente le scale;

ritenne più saggio fuggire in qualche modo, presumibilmente dalla finestra.

Ma sulla natura stessa dell’oggetto era difficile dire

alcunché, perché sembrava del tutto anomalo. Era lunga quanto uno

spadone; eppure non seguiva il modello di alcuna spada nota. Non

aveva né guardia né pomo di alcun tipo. L’elsa era lunga quanto la

lama; la lama era larga il doppio dell’elsa; almeno, alla sua

base, donde si assottigliava a punta in una sorta di triangolo

rettangolo, con affilato solo il bordo esterno, ovvero l’ipotenusa. Pond

contemplava pensoso quest’arma rozza, fatta molto grossolanamente

di ferro e legno dipinto di colori sgargianti; e i suoi pensieri

crept slowly back to that shop across the road that was hung with

strange and savage weapons. Yet this seemed to be in a somewhat

cruder and gaudier style. Mr. Schiller-Levy naturally denied all

knowledge of it, which he would presumably have done in any case;

but what was much more cogent, all the real authorities on such

barbaric or Oriental arms said that they had never seen such a

thing before.

Touching many other things, the darkness began to thin away to a

somewhat dreary dawn. It was ascertained that poor Arthur’s

equivocal fiancée had indeed fled; very possibly in company with

the missing plan. She was known by this time to be a woman quite

capable of stealing a document or even stabbing a man. But it was

doubtful whether any woman was capable of stabbing a man, with that

huge and heavy and clumsy instrument, so as to fix him to the

floor; and quite impossible to imagine why she should select it for

the purpose.

“It would all be as clear as death,” said Mr. Butt, bitterly,

“except for that lumbering, long-hilted short-sword, or whatever it

is. It never was in Levy’s shop. It never was in Asia or Africa

or any of the tribes the learned jossers tell us about. It’s the

real remaining mystery of the whole thing.”

Mr. Pond seemed to be waking up slowly from a trance of hours or

days.

“Oh, THAT,” he said, “that’s the only thing about it I’m really

beginning to understand.”

It has been hinted, with every delicacy, we may hope, that the

attitude of Mr. Pond towards the visits of Mrs. Hartog-Haggard was,

perhaps, rather passive than receptive; that he did not look

forward to them as pants the hart for cooling streams; and that for

him they rather resembled getting into hot water. It is all the

more worthy of record that, on the last occasion of her bringing

him a new tale of woe, he actually leapt to his feet with an air of

excitement and even of triumph. He had been right in his

premonitions about the wisdom of folly; and the triumph was truly

the triumph of the fool. Mrs. Hartog-Haggard gave him the clue

after all.

She darted in under the scaffolding by the doorway, the same dark

and almost antic figure. Full of the Cause, she was utterly

oblivious of such trifles as the murder of his friend. She had now

reverted to her original disapproval of her own governess. She had

altered nothing, except all her reasons for disapproving of her

governess. On the former occasion she had appeared to claim the

fairy-tale used for pantomimes as exclusively English and part of

the healthy innocence of the stately homes of England. Now she was

denouncing the German woman for taking the children to the

pantomime at all; regarding it as a ruse for filling them with the

gruesome tales of Grimm and the terrors of the barbaric forest.

“They’re SENT to do that,” she repeated in the fierce, confidential

voice she used in such cases. “They’re sent here to undermine all

our children’s nerves and minds. Could any other nation be such

fiends, Mr. Pond? She’s been poisoning their poor little minds

with horrors about magicians and magic cats; and now the worst has

happened, as I knew it would. Well—YOU haven’t done anything to

stop it; and my life is simply ruined. My three girls are all

twittering with terror; and my boy is mad.”

The symptoms of Mr. Pond were still mainly those of fatigue; and

she rapped out a repetition.

“He is MAD, I tell you, Mr. Pond; he is actually SEEING things out

of those horrible German fairy-tales; says he saw a giant with a

great knife walking through the town by moonlight … a GIANT,

Mr. Pond.”

Mr. Pond staggered to his feet and for once really goggled and

gulped like a fish. Mrs. Hartog-Haggard watched him with wild

eyes, intermittently exclaiming: “Have you no word of consolation

for a mother?”

Mr. Pond abruptly controlled himself and managed to recapture, at

least, a hazy courtesy.

“Yes, madam,” he said. “I have the best possible consolation for a

mother. Your son is not mad.”

He looked more judicial, and even severe, when he next sat in

consultation with Mr. Butt, Sir Hubert Wotton, and Inspector Grote,

the leading detective of the district.

“What it comes to is this,” said Mr. Pond, very sternly: “that you

do not really know the story of Puss-in-Boots. And they talk about

this as an epoch of Education.”

“Oh, I know it’s about a clever cat and all the rest of it,” said

Butt, vaguely. “A cat that helps its master to get things—”

The Inspector smote his knee with a smack that rang through the

office.

“A cat burglar!” he cried. “So that’s what you mean. I fancied at

first there was something wrong about that bit of scaffolding round

the door; but I soon saw it was far too low and small for anybody

to climb up to the window by it. But, of course, if we’re talking

about a really clever cat burglar, there’s always some chance that—”

“Pardon me,” said Mr. Pond, “does a cat burglar, or for that matter

any burglar, any more than any cat, load himself with a gigantic

knife rather bigger than a garden spade? Nobody carries a gigantic

knife except a giant. This crime was committed by a giant.”

They all stared at him; but he resumed with the same air of frigid

rebuke:

“What I remark upon, what I regret and regard as symptomatic of

serious intellectual decay, is that you apparently do not know that

the story of Puss-in-Boots includes a giant. He is also a

magician; but he is always depicted, in pictures and pantomimes, as

an ogre with a large knife. Signor Alberto Tizzi, that somewhat

dubious foreign artist, enacts the part on the pier by the usual

expedient of walking on very high stilts, covered by very long

trousers. But he sometimes walks about on the stilts and dispenses

with the trousers; taking a walk through the almost entirely

tornavano lentamente a quella bottega dall’altra parte della strada, addobbata con

armi strane e selvagge. Eppure questa sembrava di uno stile alquanto

più rozzo e vistoso. Il signor Schiller-Levy negò naturalmente di saperne

alcunché, cosa che avrebbe presumibilmente fatto in ogni caso;

ma, ciò che era assai più convincente, tutte le vere autorità in fatto di

armi barbariche od orientali dissero di non aver mai visto una

cosa simile prima d’ora.

Toccando molte altre cose, l’oscurità cominciò a diradarsi in una

alba piuttosto tetra, un mesto albeggiare. Si accertò che l’equivoca

fidanzata del povero Arthur era davvero fuggita; molto probabilmente in compagnia

della pianta scomparsa. A questo punto la si sapeva una donna del tutto

capace di rubare un documento o persino di pugnalare un uomo. Ma era

dubbio che una donna qualsiasi fosse capace di pugnalare un uomo, con quello

strumento enorme, pesante e maldestro, così da fissarlo al

pavimento; e del tutto impossibile immaginare perché avrebbe dovuto sceglierlo

allo scopo.

“Sarebbe tutto chiaro come la morte,” disse il signor Butt, amaramente,

“se non fosse per quella pesante spadaccia dall’elsa lunga, o quel che è,

quella corta-spada. Non è mai stata nella bottega di Levy. Non è mai stata in Asia o in Africa

né presso alcuna delle tribù di cui ci parlano i dotti sapientoni. È il

vero mistero che resta dell’intera faccenda.”

Il signor Pond sembrava ridestarsi lentamente da una trance di ore o

di giorni.

“Oh, QUELLA,” disse, “quella è l’unica cosa che comincio

davvero a capire.”

È stato accennato, con ogni delicatezza, possiamo sperare, che l’atteggiamento

del signor Pond verso le visite della signora Hartog-Haggard fosse,

forse, più passivo che ricettivo; che non le attendesse

con la brama con cui il cervo anela ai freschi ruscelli; e che per

lui somigliassero piuttosto a un cacciarsi nei guai, in acqua bollente.

Tanto più merita di essere annotato che, all’ultima occasione in cui gli portò

una nuova storia di sventure, egli balzò letteralmente in piedi con un’aria di

eccitazione e persino di trionfo. Aveva avuto ragione nei suoi

presentimenti sulla saggezza della follia; e il trionfo era davvero

il trionfo dello sciocco. La signora Hartog-Haggard gli fornì la chiave

dopo tutto.

Sgusciò sotto l’impalcatura presso la soglia, la stessa figura scura

e quasi grottesca. Colma della Causa, era del tutto

immemore di quisquilie come l’assassinio del suo amico. Era ormai

tornata alla sua originaria disapprovazione verso la propria governante. Non

aveva mutato nulla, tranne tutte le sue ragioni per disapprovare la

governante. Nell’occasione precedente era parsa reclamare

la fiaba usata per le pantomime come esclusivamente inglese e parte della

sana innocenza delle nobili dimore d’Inghilterra. Ora

denunciava la donna tedesca per aver portato affatto i bambini alla

pantomima; considerandola uno stratagemma per riempirli delle

macabre novelle dei Grimm e dei terrori della selva barbarica.

“Sono MANDATE a farlo,” ripeté con la voce fiera e confidenziale

che usava in tali casi. “Sono mandate qui a minare i nervi e le

menti di tutti i nostri figli. Potrebbe un’altra nazione essere così

demoniaca, signor Pond? Ha avvelenato le loro povere piccole menti

con storie di orrore su maghi e gatti magici; e ora è accaduto il peggio,

come sapevo che sarebbe accaduto. Beh… LEI non ha fatto nulla per

impedirlo; e la mia vita è semplicemente rovinata. Le mie tre bambine

tremano tutte di terrore; e il mio ragazzo è impazzito.”

I sintomi del signor Pond erano ancora principalmente quelli della spossatezza; ed

ella scandì di nuovo la sua frase.

“È IMPAZZITO, glielo dico, signor Pond; VEDE davvero cose uscite

da quelle orribili fiabe tedesche; dice di aver visto un gigante con un

grande coltello camminare per la città al chiaro di luna… un GIGANTE,

signor Pond.”

Il signor Pond si alzò barcollando in piedi e per una volta spalancò gli occhi e

deglutì come un pesce. La signora Hartog-Haggard lo osservava con occhi

stralunati, esclamando a intermittenza: “Non ha una parola di conforto

per una madre?”

Il signor Pond si dominò di colpo e riuscì a recuperare, almeno,

una vaga cortesia.

“Sì, signora,” disse. “Ho la migliore consolazione possibile per una

madre. Suo figlio non è pazzo.”

Aveva un’aria più giudiziosa, e persino severa, quando poco dopo sedette

in consulto con il signor Butt, Sir Hubert Wotton e l’ispettore Grote,

il principale investigatore del distretto.

“Il punto è questo,” disse il signor Pond, molto severamente: “che lei

non conosce davvero la storia del Gatto con gli Stivali. E si parla di

questa come di un’epoca di Istruzione.”

“Oh, so che parla di un gatto astuto e tutto il resto,” disse

Butt, vagamente. “Un gatto che aiuta il suo padrone a procurarsi cose…”

L’ispettore si diede una manata sul ginocchio con uno schiocco che risuonò per tutto

l’ufficio.

“Un gatto scassinatore!” gridò. “Ecco cosa intende. All’inizio avevo

immaginato che ci fosse qualcosa di sbagliato in quel pezzo d’impalcatura intorno

alla porta; ma vidi presto che era troppo bassa e piccola perché qualcuno

vi si arrampicasse fino alla finestra. Ma, certo, se parliamo

di un gatto scassinatore davvero abile, c’è sempre qualche possibilità che…”

“Mi perdoni,” disse il signor Pond, “forse che un gatto scassinatore, o del resto

un qualsiasi scassinatore, più di un qualsiasi gatto, si carica di un gigantesco

coltello piuttosto più grande di una vanga da giardino? Nessuno porta un gigantesco

coltello tranne un gigante. Questo delitto è stato commesso da un gigante.”

Lo fissarono tutti; ma egli riprese con la stessa aria di gelido

rimprovero:

“Ciò che rilevo, ciò che deploro e considero sintomatico di un

grave decadimento intellettuale, è che voi apparentemente non sapete che

la storia del Gatto con gli Stivali comprende un gigante. Egli è anche un

mago; ma è sempre raffigurato, nelle illustrazioni e nelle pantomime, come

un orco con un grande coltello. Il signor Alberto Tizzi, quell’artista straniero

alquanto dubbio, l’artista, interpreta la parte sul molo col solito

espediente di camminare su altissimi trampoli, coperti da lunghissimi

pantaloni. Ma talvolta cammina sui trampoli facendo a meno

dei pantaloni; concedendosi una passeggiata per le strade quasi interamente

deserted streets at night. Just round here, especially, the

chances are against his being even seen; all the big houses are

shut up, except ours and Mrs. Hartog-Haggard’s, which only looks on

the street through a landing window; through which her little boy

(probably in his nightgown) peered and beheld a real ogre, with a

great gory knife, and, perhaps, a great grinning mask, walking

majestically under the moon—rather a fine sight to put among the

memories of childhood. For the rest, all the poor houses are low

houses of one storey; and the people would see nothing but his

legs, or rather his stilts, even if they did look out; and they

probably didn’t. The really native poor, in these seaport towns,

have country habits; and generally go to bed early. But it

wouldn’t really have been fatal to his plans even if he had been

seen. He was a recognized public entertainer, dressed in his

recognized part; and there is nothing illegal in walking about on

stilts. The really clever part of it was the trick by which he

could leave the stilts standing, and climb out of them on to any

ledge or roof or other upper level. So he left them standing

outside our doorway, among the poles of the little scaffolding,

while he climbed in at the upper window and killed poor Travers.”

“If you are sure of this,” cried Sir Hubert Wotton, starting to his

feet hastily, “you ought to act on it at once!”

“I did act on it at once,” replied Pond, with a slight sigh. “This

morning two or three clowns with white faces were going about on

stilts on the beach, distributing leaflets of the pantomime. One

of them was arrested and found to be Signor Tizzi. He was also

found, I am glad to say, to be still in possession of the plans.”

But he sighed again.

“For after all,” as Mr. Pond observed, in telling the tale long

after, “though we did manage to save the secret plans, the incident

was much more of a tragedy than a triumph. And what I most

intensely disliked about the tragedy was the irony—what I believe

is called the tragic irony, or, alternatively, the Greek irony. We

felt perfectly certain we were guarding the only entrance to the

office, because we sat staring at the street between two little

clusters of sticks, which we knew were a temporary part of the

furniture. We didn’t count the sticks; we didn’t know when there

happened to be two more wooden poles standing up among the other

wooden poles. We certainly had no notion of what was on top of

those two poles; nor would our fancy have easily entertained the

idea that it was a pantomime giant. We ought to have seen him—

only,” said Mr. Pond, ending, as he had begun, with an apologetic

little laugh, “he was too tall to be seen.”

deserte di notte. Proprio da queste parti, in particolare, le

probabilità sono contro il fatto che venga anche solo visto; tutte le grandi case sono

chiuse, tranne la nostra e quella della signora Hartog-Haggard, che affaccia sulla

strada soltanto attraverso una finestra del pianerottolo; dalla quale il suo bambino

(probabilmente in camicia da notte) sbirciò e scorse un vero orco, con un

grande coltello insanguinato e, forse, una grande maschera ghignante, che camminava

maestosamente sotto la Luna… uno spettacolo piuttosto bello da collocare tra i

ricordi dell’infanzia. Per il resto, tutte le case dei poveri sono case

basse di un solo piano; e la gente non vedrebbe altro che le sue

gambe, o piuttosto i suoi trampoli, anche se guardasse fuori; e

probabilmente non lo fecero. I poveri davvero del posto, in queste città portuali,

hanno abitudini campagnole; e in genere vanno a letto presto. Ma non

sarebbe stato davvero fatale ai suoi piani anche se fosse stato

visto. Era un intrattenitore pubblico riconosciuto, nel costume della sua

parte riconosciuta; e non c’è nulla di illegale nel camminare sui

trampoli. La parte davvero ingegnosa fu il trucco con cui

poteva lasciare i trampoli in piedi e uscirne arrampicandosi su un

qualsiasi cornicione o tetto o altro livello superiore. Così li lasciò in piedi

fuori dalla nostra soglia, tra i pali della piccola impalcatura,

mentre si arrampicava dentro dalla finestra superiore e uccideva il povero Travers.”

“Se ne è certo,” gridò Sir Hubert Wotton, balzando in

piedi in fretta, “dovrebbe agire subito!”

“Ho agito subito,” rispose Pond, con un lieve sospiro. “Questa

mattina due o tre pagliacci dal volto imbiancato andavano in giro sui

trampoli sulla spiaggia, distribuendo volantini della pantomima. Uno

di loro è stato arrestato e si è rivelato essere il signor Tizzi. È stato anche

trovato, sono lieto di dirlo, ancora in possesso delle piante.”

Ma sospirò di nuovo.

“Perché in fondo,” osservò il signor Pond, raccontando la storia molto

tempo dopo, “benché siamo riusciti a salvare le piante segrete, l’episodio

fu assai più una tragedia che un trionfo. E ciò che più

intensamente mi dispiacque della tragedia fu l’ironia… quella che credo

si chiami ironia tragica, o, in alternativa, ironia greca. Ci

sentivamo perfettamente certi di sorvegliare l’unico ingresso all’

ufficio, perché sedevamo con lo sguardo fisso sulla strada tra due piccoli

grappoli di paletti, che sapevamo essere parte provvisoria dell’

arredo. Non contammo i paletti; non sapevamo quando accadde

che vi fossero due pali di legno in più ritti in mezzo agli altri

pali di legno. Non avevamo certo idea di cosa vi fosse in cima a

quei due pali; né la nostra fantasia avrebbe facilmente accolto

l’idea che si trattasse di un gigante da pantomima. Avremmo dovuto vederlo…

solo che,” disse il signor Pond, concludendo, come aveva cominciato, con un piccolo

riso di scusa, “era troppo alto per essere visto.”