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                           Part II

             The Explanations of Innocent Smith




















                          Chapter I

                      The Eye of Death;
                    or, the Murder Charge


The dining-room of the Dukes had been set out for the Court
of Beacon with a certain impromptu pomposity that seemed
somehow to increase its cosiness.  The big room was, as it
were, cut up into small rooms, with walls only waist high --
the sort of separation that children make when they are
playing at shops.  This had been done by Moses Gould and
Michael Moon (the two most active members of this remarkable
inquiry) with the ordinary furniture of the place.  At one
end of the long mahogany table was set the one enormous
garden chair, which was surmounted by the old torn tent or
umbrella which Smith himself had suggested as a coronation
canopy.  Inside this erection could be perceived the dumpy
form of Mrs. Duke, with cushions and a form of countenance
that already threatened slumber.  At the other end sat the
accused Smith, in a kind of dock; for he was carefully
fenced in with a quadrilateral of light bedroom chairs, any
of which he could have tossed out the window with his big
toe.  He had been provided with pens and paper, out of the
latter of which he made paper boats, paper darts, and paper
dolls contentedly through the whole proceedings.  He never
spoke or even looked up, but seemed as unconscious as a
child on the floor of an empty nursery.
   On a row of chairs raised high on the top of a long
settee sat the three young ladies with their backs up
against the window, and Mary Gray in the middle; it was
something between a jury box and the stall of the Queen of
Beauty at a tournament.  Down the centre of the long table
Moon had built a low barrier out of eight bound volumes of
"Good Words" to express the moral wall that divided the
conflicting parties.  On the right side sat the two
advocates of the prosecution, Dr. Pym and Mr. Gould; behind,
a barricade of books and documents, chiefly (in the case of
Dr. Pym) solid volumes of criminology.  On the other side,
Moon and Inglewood, for the defence, were also fortified
with books and papers; but as these included several old
yellow volumes by Ouida and Wilkie Collins, the hand of Mr.
Moon seemed to have been somewhat careless and
comprehensive.  As for the victim and prosecutor, Dr.
Warner, Moon wanted at first to have him kept entirely
behind a high screen in the court, urging the indelicacy of
his appearance in court, but privately assuring him of an
unofficial permission to peep over the top now and then.
Dr. Warner, however, failed to rise to the chivalry of such
a course, and after some little disturbance and discussion
he was accommodated with a seat on the right side of the
table in a line with his legal advisers.
   It was before this solidly-established tribunal that Dr.
Cyrus Pym, after passing a hand through the honey-coloured
hair over each ear, rose to open the case.  His statement
was clear and even restrained, and such flights of imagery
as occurred in it only attracted attention by a certain
indescribable abruptness, not uncommon in the flowers of
American speech.
   He planted the points of his ten frail fingers on the
mahogany, closed his eyes, and opened his mouth.  "The time
has gone by," he said, "when murder could be regarded as a
moral and individual act, important perhaps to the murderer,
perhaps to the murdered.  Science has profoundly..." here he
paused, poising his compressed finger and thumb in the air
as if he were holding an elusive idea very tight by its
tail, then he screwed up his eyes and said "modified," and
let it go -- "has profoundly Modified our view of death.  In
superstitious ages it was regarded as the termination of
life, catastrophic, and even tragic, and was often
surrounded with solemnity.  Brighter days, however, have
dawned, and we now see death as universal and inevitable, as
part of that great soul-stirring and heart-upholding average
which we call for convenience the order of nature.  In the
same way we have come to consider murder socially.  Rising
above the mere private feelings of a man while being
forcibly deprived of life, we are privileged to behold
murder as a mighty whole, to see the rich rotation of the
cosmos, bringing, as it brings the golden harvests and the
golden-bearded harvesters, the return for ever of the
slayers and the slain."
   He looked down, somewhat affected with his own eloquence,
coughed slightly, putting up four of his pointed fingers
with the excellent manners of Boston, and continued: "There
is but one result of this happier and humaner outlook which
concerns the wretched man before us.  It is that thoroughly
elucidated by a Milwaukee doctor, our great secret-guessing
Sonnenschein, in his great work, `The Destructive Type.'  We
do not denounce Smith as a murderer, but rather as a
murderous man.  The type is such that its very life -- I
might say its very health -- is in killing.  Some hold that
it is not properly an aberration, but a newer and even a
higher creature.  My dear old friend Dr. Bulger, who kept
ferrets --" (here Moon suddenly ejaculated a loud "hurrah!"
but so instantaneously resumed his tragic expression that
Mrs. Duke looked everywhere else for the origin of the
sound); Dr. Pym continued somewhat sternly -- "who, in the
interests of knowledge, kept ferrets, felt that the
creature's ferocity is not utilitarian, but absolutely an
end in itself.  However this may be with ferrets, it is
certainly so with the prisoner.  In his other iniquities you
may find the cunning of the maniac; but his acts of blood
have almost the simplicity of sanity.  But it is the awful
sanity of the sun and the elements -- a cruel, an evil
sanity.  As soon stay the iris-leapt cataracts of our virgin
West as stay the natural force that sends him forth to
slay.  No environment, however scientific, could have
softened him.  Place that man in the silver-silent purity of
the palest cloister, and there will be some deed of violence
done with the crozier or the alb.  Rear him in a happy
nursery, amid our brave-browed Anglo-Saxon infancy, and he
will find some way to strangle with the skipping-rope or
brain with the brick.  Circumstances may be favourable,
training may be admirable, hopes may be high, but the huge
elemental hunger of Innocent Smith for blood will in its
appointed season burst like a well-timed bomb."
   Arthur Inglewood glanced curiously for an instant at the
huge creature at the foot of the table, who was fitting a
paper figure with a cocked hat, and then looked back at Dr.
Pym, who was concluding in a quieter tone.
   "It only remains for us," he said, "to bring forward
actual evidence of his previous attempts.  By an agreement
already made with the Court and the leaders of the defence,
we are permitted to put in evidence authentic letters from
witnesses to these scenes, which the defence is free to
examine.  Out of several cases of such outrages we have
decided to select one -- the clearest and most scandalous.
I will therefore, without further delay, call on my junior,
Mr. Gould, to read two letters -- one from the Sub-Warden
and the other from the porter of Brakespeare College, in
Cambridge University."
   Gould jumped up with a jerk like a jack-in-the-box, an
academic-looking paper in his hand and a fever of importance
on his face.  He began in a loud, high, cockney voice that
was as abrupt as a cock-crow: --

   "Sir, -- Hi am the Sub-Warden of Brikespeare College,
Cambridge --"

   "Lord have mercy on us," muttered Moon, making a backward
movement as men do when a gun goes off.

   "Hi am the Sub-Warden of Brikespeare College, Cambridge,"
proclaimed the uncompromising Moses, "and I can endorse the
description you give of the conduct of the un'appy Smith.
It was not alone my unfortunate duty to rebuke many of the
lesser violences of his undergraduate period, but I was
actually a witness to the last iniquity which terminated
that period.  Hi happened to passing under the house of my
friend the Warden of Brikespeare, which is semi-detached
from the College and connected with it by two or three very
ancient arches or props, like bridges, across a small strip
of water connected with the river.  To my grive astonishment
I be'eld my eminent friend suspended in mid-air and clinging
to one of these pieces of masonry, his appearance and
attitude indicatin' that he suffered from the grivest
apprehensions.  After a short time I heard two very loud
shots, and distinctly perceived the unfortunate
undergraduate Smith leaning far out of the Warden's window
and aiming at the Warden repeatedly with a revolver.  Upon
seeing me, Smith burst into a loud laugh (in which
impertinence was mingled with insanity), and appeared to
desist.  I sent the college porter for a ladder, and he
succeeded in detaching the Warden from his painful
position.  Smith was sent down.  The photograph I enclose is
from the group of the University Rifle Club prizemen, and
represents him as he was when at the College. -- Hi am, your
obedient servant,  Amos Boulter."

   "The other letter," continued Gould in a glow of triumph,
"is from the porter, and won't take long to read.

   "Dear Sir, -- It is quite true that I am the porter of
Brikespeare College, and that I 'elped the Warden down when
the young man was shooting at him, as Mr. Boulter has said
in his letter.  The young man who was shooting was Mr.
Smith, the same that is in the photograph Mr. Boulter sends.
-- Yours respectfully,  Samuel Barker."

   Gould handed the two letters across to Moon, who examined
them.  But for the vocal divergences in the matter of h's
and a's, the Sub-Warden's letter was exactly as Gould had
rendered it; and both that and the porter's letter were
plainly genuine.  Moon handed them to Inglewood, who handed
them back in silence to Moses Gould.
   "So far as this first charge of continual attempted
murder is concerned," said Dr. Pym, standing up for the last
time, "that is my case."
   Michael Moon rose for the defence with an air of
depression which gave little hope at the outset to the
sympathizers with the prisoner.  He did not, he said,
propose to follow the doctor into the abstract questions.
"I do not know enough to be an agnostic," he said, rather
wearily, "and I can only master the known and admitted
elements in such controversies.  As for science and
religion, the known and admitted facts are few and plain
enough.  All that the parsons say is unproved.  All that the
doctors say is disproved.  That's the only difference
between science and religion there's ever been, or will be.
Yet these new discoveries touch me, somehow," he said,
looking down sorrowfully at his boots.  "They remind me of a
dear old great-aunt of mine who used to enjoy them in her
youth.  It brings tears to my eyes.  I can see the old
bucket by the garden fence and the line of shimmering
poplars behind --"
   "Hi! here, stop the 'bus a bit," cried Mr. Moses Gould,
rising in a sort of perspiration.  "We want to give the
defence a fair run -- like gents, you know; but any gent
would draw the line at shimmering poplars."
   "Well, hang it all," said Moon, in an injured manner, "if
Dr. Pym may have an old friend with ferrets, why mayn't I
have an old aunt with poplars?"
   "I am sure," said Mrs. Duke, bridling, with something
almost like a shaky authority, "Mr. Moon may have what aunts
he likes."
   "Why, as to liking her," began Moon, "I -- but perhaps,
as you say, she is scarcely the core of the question.  I
repeat that I do not mean to follow the abstract
speculations.  For, indeed, my answer to Dr. Pym is simple
and severely concrete.  Dr. Pym has only treated one side of
the psychology of murder.  If it is true that there is a
kind of man who has a natural tendency to murder, is it not
equally true" -- here he lowered his voice and spoke with a
crushing quietude and earnestness --  "is it not equally
true that there is a kind of man who has a natural tendency
to get murdered?  Is it not at least a hypothesis holding
the field that Dr. Warner is such a man?  I do not speak
without the book, any more than my learned friend.  The
whole matter is expounded in Dr. Moonenschein's monumental
work, `The Destructible Doctor,' with diagrams, showing the
various ways in which such a person as Dr. Warner may be
resolved into his elements.  In the light of these facts --"
   "Hi, stop the 'bus! stop the 'bus!" cried Moses, jumping
up and down and gesticulating in great excitement.  "My
principal's got something to say!  My principal wants to do
a bit of talkin'."
   Dr. Pym was indeed on his feet, looking pallid and rather
vicious.  "I have strictly CON-fined myself," he said
nasally, "to books to which immediate reference can be
made.  I have Sonnenschein's `Destructive Type' here on the
table, if the defence wish to see it.  Where is this
wonderful work on Destructability Mr. Moon is talking
about?  Does it exist?  Can he produce it?"
   "Produce it!" cried the Irishman with a rich scorn.
"I'll produce it in a week if you'll pay for the ink and
paper."
   "Would it have much authority?" asked Pym, sitting down.
   "Oh, authority!" said Moon lightly; "that depends on a
fellow's religion."
   Dr. Pym jumped up again.  "Our authority is based on
masses of accurate detail," he said.  "It deals with a
region in which things can be handled and tested.  My
opponent will at least admit that death is a fact of
experience."
   "Not of mine," said Moon mournfully, shaking his head.
"I've never experienced such a thing in all my life."
   "Well, really," said Dr. Pym, and sat down sharply amid a
crackle of papers.
   "So we see," resumed Moon, in the same melancholy voice,
"that a man like Dr. Warner is, in the mysterious workings
of evolution, doomed to such attacks.  My client's
onslaught, even if it occurred, was not unique.  I have in
my hand letters from more than one acquaintance of Dr.
Warner whom that remarkable man has affected in the same
way.  Following the example of my learned friends I will
read only two of them.  The first is from an honest and
laborious matron living off the Harrow Road.

   "Mr. Moon, Sir, -- Yes, I did throw a sorsepan at him.
Wot then?  It was all I had to throw, all the soft things
being porned, and if your Docter Warner doesn't like having
sorsepans thrown at him, don't let him wear his hat in a
respectable woman's parler, and tell him to leave orf
smiling or tell us the joke. -- Yours respectfully,
                                               Hannah Miles.

   "The other letter is from a physician of some note in
Dublin, with whom Dr. Warner was once engaged in
consultation.  He writes as follows: --

   "Dear Sir, -- The incident to which you refer is one
which I regret, and which, moreover, I have never been able
to explain.  My own branch of medicine is not mental; and I
should be glad to have the view of a mental specialist on my
singular momentary and indeed almost automatic action.  To
say that I `pulled Dr. Warner's nose,' is, however,
inaccurate in a respect that strikes me as important.  That
I punched his nose I must cheerfully admit (I need not say
with what regret); but pulling seems to me to imply a
precision of handling and an exactitude of objective with
which I cannot reproach myself.  In comparison with this,
the act of punching was an outward, instantaneous, and even
natural gesture. -- Believe me, yours faithfully,
                                           Burton Lestrange.

   "I have numberless other letters," continued Moon, "all
bearing witness to this widespread feeling about my eminent
friend; and I therefore think that Dr. Pym should have
admitted this side of the question into his survey.  We are
in the presence, as Dr. Pym so truly says, of a natural
force.  As soon stay the cataracts of the London water-works
as stay the great tendency of Dr. Warner to be assassinated
by somebody.  Place that man in a Quakers' meeting, among
the most peaceful of Christians, and he will immediately be
beaten to death with sticks of chocolate.  Place him among
the angels of the New Jerusalem, and he will be stoned to
death with precious stones.  Circumstances may be beautiful
and wonderful, the average may be heart-upholding, the
harvester may be golden-bearded, the doctor may be
secret-guessing, the cataract may be iris-leapt, the
Anglo-Saxon infant may be brave-browed, but against and
above all these prodigies the grand simple tendency of Dr.
Warner to get murdered will still pursue its way until it
happily and triumphantly succeeds at last."
   He pronounced this peroration with an appearance of
strong emotion.  But even stronger emotions were manifesting
themselves on the other side of the table.  Dr. Warner had
leaned his large body quite across the little figure of
Moses Gould and was talking in excited whispers to Dr. Pym.
That expert nodded a great many times and finally started to
to his feet with a sincere expression of sternness.
   "Ladies and gentlemen," he cried indignantly, "as my
colleague has said, we should be delighted to give any
latitude to the defence -- if there were a defence.  But Mr.
Moon seems to think he is there to make jokes -- very good
jokes I dare say, but not at all adapted to assist his
client.  He picks holes in science.  He picks holes in my
client's social popularity.  He picks holes in my literary
style, which doesn't seem to suit his high-toned European
taste.  But how does this picking of holes affect the
issue?  This Smith has picked two holes in my client's hat,
and with an inch better aim would have picked two holes in
his head.  All the jokes in the world won't unpick those
holes or be any use for the defence."
   Inglewood looked down in some embarrassment, as if shaken
by the evident fairness of this, but Moon still gazed at his
opponent in a dreamy way.  "The defence?" he said vaguely --
"oh, I haven't begun that yet."
   "You certainly have not," said Pym warmly, amid a murmur
of applause from his side, which the other side found it
impossible to answer.  "Perhaps, if you have any defence,
which has been doubtful from the very beginning --"
   "While you're standing up," said Moon, in the same almost
sleepy style, "perhaps I might ask you a question."
   "A question?  Certainly," said Pym stiffly.  "It was
distinctly arranged between us that as we could not
cross-examine the witnesses, we might vicariously
cross-examine each other.  We are in a position to invite
all such inquiry."
   "I think you said," observed Moon absently, "that none of
the prisoner's shots really hit the doctor."
   "For the cause of science," cried the complacent Pym,
"fortunately not."
   "Yet they were fired from a few feet away."
   "Yes; about four feet."
   "And no shots hit the Warden, though they were fired
quite close to him too?" asked Moon.
   "That is so," said the witness gravely.
   "I think," said Moon, suppressing a slight yawn, "that
your Sub-Warden mentioned that Smith was one of the
University's record men for shooting."
   "Why, as to that --" began Pym, after an instant of
stillness.
   "A second question," continued Moon, comparatively
curtly.  "You said there were other cases of the accused
trying to kill people.  Why have you not got evidence of
them?"
   The American planted the points of his fingers on the
table again.  "In those cases," he said precisely, "there
was no evidence from outsiders, as in the Cambridge case,
but only the evidence of the actual victims."
   "Why didn't you get their evidence?"
   "In the case of the actual victims," said Pym, "there was
some difficulty and reluctance, and --"
   "Do you mean," asked Moon, "that none of the actual
victims would appear against the prisoner?"
   "That would be exaggerative," began the other.
   "A third question," said Moon, so sharply that every one
jumped.  "You've got the evidence of the Sub-Warden who
heard some shots; where's the evidence of the Warden himself
who was shot at?  The Warden of Brakespeare lives, a
prosperous gentleman."
   "We did ask for a statement from him," said Pym a little
nervously; "but it was so eccentrically expressed that we
suppressed it out of deference to an old gentleman whose
past services to science have been great."
   Moon leaned forward.  "You mean, I suppose," he said,
"that his statement was favourable to the prisoner."
   "It might be understood so," replied the American doctor;
"but, really, it was difficult to understand at all.  In
fact, we sent it back to him."
   "You have no longer, then, any statement signed by the
Warden of Brakespeare."
   "No."
   "I only ask," said Michael quietly, "because we have.  To
conclude my case I will ask my junior, Mr. Inglewood, to
read a statement of the true story -- a statement attested
as true by the signature of the Warden himself."
   Arthur Inglewood rose with several papers in his hand,
and though he looked somewhat refined and self-effacing, as
he always did, the spectators were surprised to feel that
his presence was, upon the whole, more efficient and
sufficing than his leader's.  He was, in truth, one of those
modest men who cannot speak until they are told to speak;
and then can speak well.  Moon was entirely the opposite.
His own impudences amused him in private, but they slightly
embarrassed him in public; he felt a fool while he was
speaking, whereas Inglewood felt a fool only because he
could not speak.  The moment he had anything to say he could
speak; and the moment he could speak, speaking seemed quite
natural.  Nothing in this universe seemed quite natural to
Michael Moon.
   "As my colleague has just explained," said Inglewood,
"there are two enigmas or inconsistencies on which we base
the defence.  The first is a plain physical fact.  By the
admission of everybody, by the very evidence adduced by the
prosecution, it is clear that the accused was celebrated as
a specially good shot.  Yet on both the occasions complained
of he shot from a distance of four or five feet, and shot at
him four or five times, and never hit him once.  That is the
first startling circumstance on which we base our argument.
The second, as my colleague has urged, is the curious fact
that we cannot find a single victim of these alleged
outrages to speak for himself.  Subordinates speak for him.
Porters climb up ladders to him.  But he himself is silent.
Ladies and gentlemen, I propose to explain on the spot both
the riddle of the shots and the riddle of the silence.  I
will first of all read the covering letter in which the true
account of the Cambridge incident is contained, and then
that document itself.  When you have heard both, there will
be no doubt about your decision.  The covering letter runs
as follows: --

   "Dear Sir, -- The following is a very exact and even
vivid account of the incident as it really happened at
Brakespeare College.  We, the undersigned, do not see any
particular reason why we should refer it to any isolated
authorship.  The truth is, it has been a composite
production; and we have even had some difference of opinion
about the adjectives.  But every word of it is true. -- We
are, yours faithfully,

                                     "Wilfred Emerson Eames,
                  "Warden of Brakespeare College, Cambridge.

                                            "Innocent Smith.

   "The enclosed statement," continued Inglewood, "runs as
follows: --

   "A celebrated English university backs so abruptly on the
river, that it has, so to speak, to be propped up and
patched with all sorts of bridges and semi-detached
buildings.  The river splits itself into several small
streams and canals, so that in one or two corners the place
has almost the look of Venice.  It was so especially in the
case with which we are concerned, in which a few flying
buttresses or airy ribs of stone sprang across a strip of
water to connect Brakespeare College with the house of the
Warden of Brakespeare.
   "The country around these colleges is flat; but it does
not seem flat when one is thus in the midst of the
colleges.  For in these flat fens there are always wandering
lakes and lingering rivers of water.  And these always
change what might have been a scheme of horizontal lines
into a scheme of vertical lines.  Wherever there is water
the height of high buildings is doubled, and a British brick
house becomes a Babylonian tower.  In that shining unshaken
surface the houses hang head downwards exactly to their
highest or lowest chimney.  The coral-coloured cloud seen in
that abyss is as far below the world as its original appears
above it.  Every scrap of water is not only a window but a
skylight.  Earth splits under men's feet into precipitous
aerial perspectives, into which a bird could as easily wing
its way as --"

   Dr. Cyrus Pym rose in protest.  The documents he had put
in evidence had been confined to cold affirmation of fact.
The defence, in a general way, had an indubitable right to
put their case in their own way, but all this landscape
gardening seemed to him (Dr. Cyrus Pym) to be not up to the
business.  "Will the leader of the defence tell me," he
asked, "how it can possibly affect this case, that a cloud
was cor'l-coloured, or that a bird could have winged itself
anywhere?"
   "Oh, I don't know," said Michael, lifting himself lazily;
"you see, you don't know yet what our defence is.  Till you
know that, don't you see, anything may be relevant.  Why,
suppose," he said suddenly, as if an idea had struck him,
"suppose we wanted to prove the old Warden colour-blind.
Suppose he was shot by a black man with white hair, when he
thought he was being shot by a white man with yellow hair!
To ascertain if that cloud was really and truly coral-
coloured might be of the most massive importance."
   He paused with a seriousness which was hardly generally
shared, and continued with the same fluency: "Or suppose we
wanted to maintain that the Warden committed suicide -- that
he just got Smith to hold the pistol as Brutus's slave held
the sword.  Why, it would make all the difference whether
the Warden could see himself plain in still water.  Still
water has made hundreds of suicides: one sees oneself so
very -- well, so very plain."
   "Do you, perhaps," inquired Pym with austere irony,
"maintain that your client was a bird of some sort -- say, a
flamingo?"
   "In the matter of his being a flamingo," said Moon with
sudden severity, "my client reserves his defence."
   No one quite knowing what to make of this, Mr. Moon
resumed his seat with an air of great sternness, and
Inglewood resumed the reading of his document: --

   "There is something pleasing to a mystic in such a land
of mirrors.  For a mystic is one who holds that two worlds
are better than one.  In the highest sense, indeed, all
thought is reflection.
   "This is the real truth, in the saying that second
thoughts are best.  Animals have no second thoughts; man
alone is able to see his own thought double, as a drunkard
sees a lamp-post; man alone is able to see his own thought
upside down as one sees a house in a puddle.  This
duplication of mentality, as in a mirror, is (we repeat) the
inmost thing of human philosophy.  There is a mystical, even
a monstrous truth, in the statement that two heads are
better than one.  But they ought both to grow on the same
body.'"

   "I know it's a little transcendental at first,"
interposed Inglewood, beaming round with a broad apology,
"but you see this document was written in collaboration by a
don and a --"
   "Drunkard, eh?" suggested Moses Gould, beginning to enjoy
himself.
   "I rather think," proceeded Inglewood with an unruffled
and critical air, "that this part was written by the don.  I
merely warn the Court that the statement, though indubitably
accurate, bears here and there the trace of coming from two
authors."
   "In that case," said Dr. Pym, leaning back and sniffing,
"I cannot agree with them that two heads are better than
one."

   "The undersigned persons think it needless to touch on a
kindred problem so often discussed at committees for
University Reform: the question of whether dons see double
because they are drunk, or get drunk because they see
double.  It is enough for them (the undersigned persons) if
they are able to pursue their own peculiar and profitable
theme -- which is puddles.  What (the undersigned persons
ask themselves) is a puddle?  A puddle repeats infinity, and
is full of light; nevertheless, if analyzed objectively, a
puddle is a piece of dirty water spread very thin on mud.
The two great historic universities of England have all this
large and level and reflective brilliance.  Nevertheless,
or, rather, on the other hand, they are puddles -- puddles,
puddles, puddles, puddles.  The undersigned persons ask you
to excuse an emphasis inseparable from strong conviction."

   Inglewood ignored a somewhat wild expression on the faces
of some present, and continued with eminent cheerfulness: --

   "Such were the thoughts that failed to cross the mind of
the undergraduate Smith as he picked his way among the
stripes of canal and the glittering rainy gutters into which
the water broke up round the back of Brakespeare College.
Had these thoughts crossed his mind he would have been much
happier than he was.  Unfortunately he did not know that his
puzzles were puddles.  He did not know that the academic
mind reflects infinity and is full of light by the simple
process of being shallow and standing still.  In his case,
therefore, there was something solemn, and even evil about
the infinity implied.  It was half-way through a starry
night of bewildering brilliancy; stars were both above and
below.  To young Smith's sullen fancy the skies below seemed
even hollower than the skies above; he had a horrible idea
that if he counted the stars he would find one too many in
the pool.
   "In crossing the little paths and bridges he felt like
one stepping on the black and slender ribs of some cosmic
Eiffel Tower.  For to him, and nearly all the educated youth
of that epoch, the stars were cruel things.  Though they
glowed in the great dome every night, they were an enormous
and ugly secret; they uncovered the nakedness of nature;
they were a glimpse of the iron wheels and pulleys behind
the scenes.  For the young men of that sad time thought that
the god always came from the machine.  They did not know
that in reality the machine only comes from the god.  In
short, they were all pessimists, and starlight was atrocious
to them -- atrocious because it was true.  All their
universe was black with white spots.
   "Smith looked up with relief from the glittering pools
below to the glittering skies and the great black bulk of
the college.  The only light other than stars glowed through
one peacock-green curtain in the upper part of the building,
marking where Dr. Emerson Eames always worked till morning
and received his friends and favourite pupils at any hour of
the night.  Indeed, it was to his rooms that the melancholy
Smith was bound.  Smith had been at Dr. Eames's lecture for
the first half of the morning, and at pistol practice and
fencing in a saloon for the second half.  He had been
sculling madly for the first half of the afternoon and
thinking idly (and still more madly) for the second half.
He had gone to a supper where he was uproarious, and on to a
debating club where he was perfectly insufferable, and the
melancholy Smith was melancholy still.  Then, as he was
going home to his diggings he remembered the eccentricity of
his friend and master, the Warden of Brakespeare, and
resolved desperately to turn in to that gentleman's private
house.
   "Emerson Eames was an eccentric in many ways, but his
throne in philosophy and metaphysics was of international
eminence; the university could hardly have afforded to lose
him, and, moreover, a don has only to continue any of his
bad habits long enough to make them a part of the British
Constitution.  The bad habits of Emerson Eames were to sit
up all night and to be a student of Schopenhauer.
Personally, he was a lean, lounging sort of man, with a
blond pointed beard, not so very much older than his pupil
Smith in the matter of mere years, but older by centuries in
the two essential respects of having a European reputation
and a bald head.
   "`I came, against the rules, at this unearthly hour,'
said Smith, who was nothing to the eye except a very big man
trying to make himself small, `because I am coming to the
conclusion that existence is really too rotten.  I know all
the arguments of the thinkers that think otherwise --
bishops, and agnostics, and those sort of people.  And
knowing you were the greatest living authority on the
pessimist thinkers --'
   "`All thinkers,' said Eames, `are pessimist thinkers.'
   "After a patch of pause, not the first -- for this
depressing conversation had gone on for some hours with
alternations of cynicism and silence -- the Warden continued
with his air of weary brilliancy: `It's all a question of
wrong calculation.  The most flies into the candle because
he doesn't happen to know that the game is not worth the
candle.  The wasp gets into the jam in hearty and hopeful
efforts to get the jam into him.  In the same way the vulgar
people want to enjoy life just as they want to enjoy gin --
because they are too stupid to see that they are paying too
big a price for it.  That they never find happiness -- that
they don't even know how to look for it -- is proved by the
paralyzing clumsiness and ugliness of everything they do.
Their discordant colours are cries of pain.  Look at the
brick villas beyond the college on this side of the river.
There's one with spotted blinds; look at it! just go and
look at it!'
   "`Of course,' he went on dreamily, `one or two men see
the sober fact a long way off -- they go mad.  Do you notice
that maniacs mostly try either to destroy other things, or
(if they are thoughtful) to destroy themselves?  The madman
is the man behind the scenes, like the man that wanders
about the coulisse of a theater.  He has only opened the
wrong door and come into the right place.  He sees things at
the right angle.  But the common world --'
   "`Oh, hang the common world!' said the sullen Smith,
letting his fist fall on the table in an idle despair.
   "`Let's give it a bad name first,' said the Professor
calmly, `and then hang it.  A puppy with hydrophobia would
probably struggle for life while we killed it; but if we
were kind we should kill it.  So an omniscient god would put
us out of our pain.  He would strike us dead.'
   "`Why doesn't he strike us dead?' asked the undergraduate
abstractedly, plunging his hands into his pockets.
   "`He is dead himself,' said the philosopher; `that is
where he is really enviable.'
   "`To any one who thinks,' proceeded Eames, `the pleasures
of life, trivial and soon tasteless, are bribes to bring us
into a torture chamber.  We all see that for any thinking
man mere extinction is the... What are you doing?... Are you
mad?... Put that thing down.'
   "Dr. Eames had turned his tired but still talkative head
over his shoulder, and had found himself looking into a
small round black hole, rimmed by a six-sided circlet of
steel, with a sort of spike standing up on the top.  It
fixed him like an iron eye.  Through those eternal instants
during which the reason is stunned he did not even know what
it was.  Then he saw behind it the chambered barrel and
cocked hammer of a revolver, and behind that the flushed and
rather heavy face of Smith, apparently quite unchanged, or
even more mild than before.
   "`I'll help you out of your hole, old man,' said Smith,
with rough tenderness.  `I'll put the puppy out of his
pain.'
   "Emerson Eames retreated towards the window.  `Do you
mean to kill me?' he cried.
   "`It's not a thing I'd do for every one,' said Smith with
emotion; `but you and I seem to have got so intimate
to-night, somehow.  I know all your troubles now, and the
only cure, old chap.'
   "`Put that thing down,' shouted the Warden.
   "`It'll soon be over, you know,' said Smith with the air
of a sympathetic dentist.  And as the Warden made a run for
the window and balcony, his benefactor followed him with a
firm step and a compassionate expression.
   "Both men were perhaps surprised to see that the gray and
white of early daybreak had already come.  One of them,
however, had emotions calculated to swallow up surprise.
Brakespeare College was one of the few that retained real
traces of Gothic ornament, and just beneath Dr. Eames's
balcony there ran out what had perhaps been a flying
buttress, still shapelessly shaped into gray beasts and
devils, but blinded with mosses and washed out with rains.
With an ungainly and most courageous leap, Eames sprang out
on this antique bridge, as the only possible mode of escape
from the maniac.  He sat astride of it, still in his
academic gown, dangling his long thin legs, and considering
further chances of flight.  The whitening daylight opened
under as well as over him that impression of vertical
infinity already remarked about the little lakes round
Brakespeare.  Looking down and seeing the spires and
chimneys pendent in the pools, they felt alone in space.
They felt as if they were peering over the edge from the
North Pole and seeing the South Pole below.
   "`Hang the world, we said,' observed Smith, `and the
world is hanged.  "He has hanged the world upon nothing,"
says the Bible.  Do you like being hanged upon nothing?  I'm
going to be hanged upon something myself.  I'm going to
swing for you... Dear, tender old phrase,' he murmured;
`never true till this moment.  I am going to swing for you.
For you, dear friend.  For your sake.  At your express
desire.'
   "`Help!' cried the Warden of Brakespeare College; `help!'
   "`The puppy struggles,' said the undergraduate, with an
eye of pity, `the poor puppy struggles.  How fortunate it is
that I am wiser and kinder than he,' and he sighted his
weapon so as exactly to cover the upper part of Eames's bald
head.
   "`Smith,' said the philosopher with a sudden change to a
sort of ghastly lucidity, `I shall go mad.'
   "`And so look at things from the right angle,' observed
Smith, sighing gently.  `Ah, but madness is only a
palliative at best, a drug.  The only cure is an operation
-- an operation that is always successful: death.'
   "As he spoke the sun rose.  It seemed to put colour into
everything, with the rapidity of a lightning artist.  A
fleet of little clouds sailing across the sky changed from
pigeon-gray to pink.  All over the little academic town the
tops of different buildings took on different tints: here
the sun would pick out the green enamel on a pinnacle, there
the scarlet tiles of a villa; here the copper ornament on
some artistic shop, and there the sea-blue slates of some
old and steep church roof.  All these coloured crests seemed
to have something oddly individual and significant about
them, like crests of famous knights pointed out in a pageant
or a battlefield: they each arrested the eye, especially the
rolling eye of Emerson Eames as he looked round on the
morning and accepted it as his last.  Through a narrow chink
between a black timber tavern and a big gray college he
could see a clock with gilt hands which the sunshine set on
fire.  He stared at it as though hypnotized; and suddenly
the clock began to strike, as if in personal reply.  As if
at a signal, clock after clock took up the cry: all the
churches awoke like chickens at cockcrow.  The birds were
already noisy in the trees behind the college.  The sun
rose, gathering glory that seemed too full for the deep
skies to hold, and the shallow waters beneath them seemed
golden and brimming and deep enough for the thirst of the
gods.  Just round the corner of the College, and visible
from his crazy perch, were the brightest specks on that
bright landscape, the villa with the spotted blinds which he
had made his text that night.  He wondered for the first
time what people lived in them.
   "Suddenly he called out with mere querulous authority, as
he might have called to a student to shut a door.
   "`Let me come off this place,' he cried; `I can't bear
it.'
   "`I rather doubt if it will bear you,' said Smith
critically; `but before you break your neck, or I blow out
your brains, or let you back into this room (on which
complex points I am undecided), I want the metaphysical
point cleared up.  Do I understand that you want to get back
to life?'
   "`I'd give anything to get back,' replied the unhappy
professor.
   "`Give anything!' cried Smith; `then, blast your
impudence, give us a song!'
   "`What song do you mean?' demanded the exasperated Eames;
`what song?'
   "`A hymn, I think, would be most appropriate,' answered
the other gravely.  `I'll let you off if you'll repeat after
me the words --

        "`I thank the goodness and the grace
            That on my birth have smiled,
          And perched me on this curious place,
            A happy English child.'

   "Dr. Emerson Eames having briefly complied, his
persecutor abruptly told him to hold his hands up in the
air.  Vaguely connecting this proceeding with the usual
conduct of brigands and bushrangers, Mr. Eames held them up,
very stiffly, but without marked surprise.  A bird alighting
on his stone seat took no more notice of him than of a comic
statue.
   "`You are now engaged in public worship,' remarked Smith
severely, `and before I have done with you, you shall thank
God for the very ducks on the pond.'
   "`The celebrated pessimist half articulately expressed
his perfect readiness to thank God for the ducks on the
pond.
   "`Not forgetting the drakes,' said Smith sternly.  (Eames
weakly conceded the drakes.)  `Not forgetting anything,
please.  You shall thank heaven for churches and chapels and
villas and vulgar people and puddles and pots and pans and
sticks and rags and bones and spotted blinds.'
   "`All right, all right,' repeated the victim in despair;
`sticks and rags and bones and blinds.'
   "`Spotted blinds, I think we said,' remarked Smith with a
roguish ruthlessness, and wagging the pistol-barrel at him
like a long metallic finger.
   "`Spotted blinds,' said Emerson Eames faintly.
   "`You can't say fairer than that,' admitted the younger
man, `and now I'll just tell you this to wind up with.  If
you really were what you profess to be, I don't see that it
would matter to snail or seraph if you broke your impious
stiff neck and dashed out all your drivelling devil-
worshipping brains.  But in strict biographical fact you are
a very nice fellow, addicted to talking putrid nonsense, and
I love you like a brother.  I shall therefore fire off all
my cartridges round your head so as not to hit you (I am a
good shot, you may be glad to hear), and then we will go in
and have some breakfast.'
   "He then let off two barrels in the air, which the
Professor endured with singular firmness, and then said,
`But don't fire them all off.'
   "`Why not' asked the other buoyantly.
   "`Keep them,' answered his companion, `for the next man
you meet who talks as we were talking.'
   "It was at this moment that Smith, looking down,
perceived apoplectic terror upon the face of the Sub-Warden,
and heard the refined shriek with which he summoned the
porter and the ladder.
   "It took Dr. Eames some little time to disentangle
himself from the ladder, and some little time longer to
disentangle himself from the Sub-Warden.  But as soon as he
could do so unobtrusively, he rejoined his companion in the
late extraordinary scene.  He was astonished to find the
gigantic Smith heavily shaken, and sitting with his shaggy
head on his hands.  When addressed, he lifted a very pale
face.
   "`Why, what is the matter?' asked Eames, whose own nerves
had by this time twittered themselves quiet, like the
morning birds.
   "`I must ask your indulgence,' said Smith, rather
brokenly.  `I must ask you to realize that I have just had
an escape from death.'
   "`YOU have had an escape from death?' repeated the
Professor in not unpardonable irritation.  `Well, of all the
cheek --'
   "`Oh, don't you understand, don't you understand?' cried
the pale young man impatiently.  `I had to do it, Eames; I
had to prove you wrong or die.  When a man's young, he
nearly always has some one whom he thinks the top-water mark
of the mind of man -- some one who knows all about it, if
anybody knows.
   "`Well, you were that to me; you spoke with authority,
and not as the scribes.  Nobody could comfort me if YOU said
there was no comfort.  If you really thought there was
nothing anywhere, it was because you had been there to see.
Don't you see that I HAD to prove you didn't really mean it?
-- or else drown myself in the canal.'
   "`Well,' said Eames hesitatingly, `I think perhaps you
confuse --'
   "`Oh, don't tell me that!' cried Smith with the sudden
clairvoyance of mental pain; `don't tell me that I confuse
enjoyment of existence with the Will to Live!   That's
German, and German is High Dutch, and High Dutch is Double
Dutch.  The thing I saw shining in your eyes when you
dangled on that bridge was enjoyment of life and not "the
Will to Live."  What you knew when you sat on that damned
gargoyle was that the world, when all is said and done, is a
wonderful and beautiful place; I know it, because I knew it
at the same minute.  I saw the gray clouds turn pink, and
the little gilt clock in the crack between the houses.  It
was THOSE things you hated leaving, not Life, whatever that
is.  Eames, we've been to the brink of death together; won't
you admit I am right?'
   "`Yes, said Eames very slowly, `I think you are right.
You shall have a First!'
   "`Right!' cried Smith, springing up reanimated.  `I've
passed with honours, and now let me go and see about being
sent down.'
   "`You needn't be sent down,' said Eames with the quiet
confidence of twelve years of intrigue.  `Everything with us
comes from the man on top to the people just round him: I am
the man on top, and I shall tell the people round me the
truth.'
   "The massive Mr. Smith rose and went firmly to the
window, but he spoke with equal firmness.  `I must be sent
down,' he said, `and the people must not be told the truth.'
   "`And why not' asked the other.
   "`Because I mean to follow your advice,' answered the
massive youth, `I mean to keep the remaining shots for
people in the shameful state you and I were in last night --
I wish we could even plead drunkenness.  I mean to keep
those bullets for pessimists -- pills for pale people.  And
in this way I want to walk the world like a wonderful
surprise -- to float as idly as the thistledown, and come as
silently as the sunrise; not to be expected any more than
the thunderbolt, not to be recalled any more than the dying
breeze.  I don't want people to anticipate me as a
well-known practical joke.  I want both my gifts to come
virgin and violent, the death and the life after death.  I
am going to hold a pistol to the head of the Modern Man.
But I shall not use it to kill him -- only to bring him to
life.  I begin to see a new meaning in being the skeleton at
the feast.'
   "`You could scarcely be called a skeleton,' said Dr.
Eames, smiling.
   "`That comes of being so much at the feast,' answered the
massive youth.  `No skeleton can keep his figure if he is
always dining out.  But that is not quite what I meant: what
I mean is that I caught a kind of glimpse of the meaning of
death and all that -- the skull and cross-bones, the
~memento mori~.  It isn't only meant to remind us of a
future life, but to remind us of a present life too.  With
our weak spirits we should grow old in eternity if we were
not kept young by death.  Providence has to cut immortality
into lengths for us, as nurses cut the bread and butter into
fingers.'
   "Then he added suddenly in a voice of unnatural
actuality, `But I know something now, Eames.  I knew it when
the clouds turned pink.'
   "`What do you mean?' asked Eames.  `What did you know?'
   "`I knew for the first time that murder is really wrong.'
   "He gripped Dr. Eames's hand and groped his way somewhat
unsteadily to the door.  Before he had vanished through it
he had added, `It's very dangerous, though, when a man
thinks for a split second that he understands death.'
   "Dr. Eames remained in repose and rumination some hours
after his late assailant had left.  Then he rose, took his
hat and umbrella, and went for a brisk if rotatory walk.
Several times, however, he stood outside the villa with the
spotted blinds, studying them intently with his head
slightly on one side.  Some took him for a lunatic and some
for an intending purchaser.  He is not yet sure that the two
characters would be widely different.
   "The above narrative has been constructed on a principle
which is, in the opinion of the undersigned persons, new in
the art of letters.  Each of the two actors is described as
he appeared to the other.  But the undersigned persons
absolutely guarantee the exactitude of the story; and if
their version of the thing be questioned, they, the
undersigned persons, would deucedly well like to know who
does know about it if they don't.
   "The undersigned persons will now adjourn to `The Spotted
Dog' for beer.  Farewell.

                              "(Signed) James Emerson Eames,
                  "Warden of Brakespeare College, Cambridge.

                                           "Innocent Smith."