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.”