"Why not?" he demanded. "Oh, you can make me out an I O U some time, and get Jimmy to witness it, if you're so d.a.m.ned--what's the word?-- punctilious. If you can't do me this simple favour, why then you must sign the business over to Jimmy here."

"No, you don't," answered Jimmy, and in accents commendably clear considering that he uttered them with his nose deep in the tankard of mulled ale. "Up to now I have played the good boy who is seen but not heard. I break the self-imposed silence only to say: 'Woe betide the man who attempts to complicate my overdraft!'"

I addressed myself to Jack. "You'll be wanting money sent to you from time to time, and I'm to transmit.--Is that the idea?"

He nodded.

"Where am I to send it?"

"That's the uncertainty, of course. From time to time I shall keep you informed. It may be to a suburban villa, it may be to some _Poste Restante_ in the Sahara. That's as the chase goes. Like Baal I shall be on a journey, or I shall be pursuing. Yes, anyway I shall be pursuing. . . . All I ask is that, on getting a call, you'll send out, as best you can, such-and-such a sum to the address indicated.

You have between 6000 and 7000 pounds sterling to play with.

Probably you will be surprised at my moderation in demanding: but anyway I shall keep well within the limit. My memory and the bank-book usually balance to a pound or two."

"Then it's travel you're after?" I asked.

He nodded. "On a journey--_and_ pursuing."

"Big game?"

"You may call it the biggest. Or I'm out to make it the biggest.

. . . Jimmy, pa.s.s me the tobacco." He took the jar and, filling his pipe, lay back in the wicker chair with something like a groan.

"Roddy, can't you _see_? These years, as you know, I've been working up my inquiry into rage in animals; beginning, that is, with animals, but always, as you know, intending to carry the inquiry up as soon as I had a solid working basis. Yes, it was all to proceed on induction--laborious tests, cla.s.sifications--you know the system and that I didn't care if it took a lifetime. Well, all of a sudden, as I'm beginning to realise that, though the process is sound--must be sound--pursuit is probably hopeless because it must take twenty lifetimes--of a sudden, I say, this new way is revealed. Put it that I've come, all of a start, upon a little stream called Rubicon.

Put it that I've burnt--no, put it that Farrell's myrmidons have burnt, at a stroke, every boat for me.

"--I might have gone on for years upon years, collecting statistics and ploughing out conclusions. . . . I begin to believe in the calculated interposition of Providence. . . . On the critical moment of transference the bridge breaks behind me. I have lost all my baggage. But, on the other sh.o.r.e, I have the jewel.

"--Listen, my boy. . . . The end of me may be empiricism. . . . They have destroyed eight years' work, and I have nothing left of it but memories of data which I can't produce for evidence--worthless, that is, for a man of my scientific conscience. _En revanche_ and on the other side of the stream I find I have _it_; to carry on and test upon a fellow-man I have the diamond to cut all gla.s.s. With the brute beasts it was all observation, much of it uncertain.

Henceforth it will be clean experiment. Farrell accused me of practising vivisection. As a matter of fact, I never did. Now I'm going to, and on Farrell."

Jimmy arose on pretence of seeking a match, and leaned his elbow on the mantelpiece while he stared into the fire.

"Oh, I say, Professor!" he blurted out. "Farrell, you know! He's no sort of cla.s.s. He--he deserves punishing, but he don't mean any harm, if you understand." Here Jimmy faced about with an ingenuous smile. "I'm a bit of a fool myself, you see, and must speak up for my order."

"But you speak up too late, my boy," answered Foe. "What's the use of telling me that Farrell is no cla.s.s? As if I didn't know _that_!

. . . Why, man, I didn't _choose_ Farrell, to pay my attentions to him. If the G.o.ds had paid me the compliment of sending along the late Mr. Gladstone, or the present Archbishop of Canterbury (whoever he may be), or General Booth (if he's alive), to knock out eight years of my life like so many skittles in an alley, I'd have felt flattered, of course. But they didn't: they sent along Farrell, and I bow my head before a higher wisdom which, you'll allow, has been justified of its child. Could the late Mr. Gladstone--since we've instanced him--have done it more expeditiously, more thoroughly, with a neater turn of the wrist? . . . No. Very well, then! Better men than I have married their cooks and been content to recognise that it just happened so. You can start apologising for Farrell when I start complaining he's inadequate."

Jack's eyes, during this speech, were for Jimmy, of course, and I had used the opportunity to watch his face pretty narrowly. It was a little more than ordinarily pale, but composed, as his tone was light and his manner of speech almost flippant. I wondered. . . .

"Jimmy meant," said I, "that _you're_ too good to match yourself against Farrell. The harm he's done you is atrocious--I can hardly look you in the face, Jack, and speak about it. . . . All the same, Jimmy talks sense: an outsider like Farrell isn't worthy of your steel, as the writers say."

"We'll wait till he has felt it." Jack stood up, pushed his hands into his trouser-pockets, took one turn around the room, returned, and came to a halt on the hearth-rug. "There's another point," said he. "You fellows can never get it out of your heads that your thoroughbred is always, and necessarily, more sensitive than your mongrel. _It must be so_--you don't trouble about evidence: it's fixed in your minds _a priori_: which means that you're just as unscientific and at least as far from the truth as I should be if I posited the exact opposite . . . As a matter of fact, some miss in the breeding will usually carry with it an irritable protective nerve and keep the animal sensitive on points which the thoroughbred ignores. Your cripple thinks of his hip, your hunchback of his spine: your well-formed man takes his hip and spine for granted.

Your b.a.s.t.a.r.d is sensitive on historical fact and predisposed to lying about it. . . . Stated thus, my counter-proposition is obvious.

You won't be so ready to agree when I go on to a.s.sure you that sensitiveness in these mongrels and misfits often spreads from the centre over the whole nervous system.--But, anyway, you knew my poor hound, the pair of you. Not much breeding in Billy, eh? . . .

Well, he bit four blackguards before they laid him out: bit 'em deep, too, and I won't answer for the virus. That dog died defending my papers. He fought on his honour, and he knew it, Roddy.

He suffered, Jimmy--even if he was dead when they threw him into the fire. And--I'm going to give your Farrell the benefit of the doubt.

. . . Where's the tobacco?"

I pa.s.sed him the jar. "We'll allow for the moment that you are right, Jack," said I. "At all events, you've made out a case.

But where do I come in? What's the part you propose for me in this show? Pull yourself together and admit that I'm asking a sweetly reasonable question."

"Didn't I explain?" Jack answered testily. "Surely I made it clear?

All I ask of you is to post me out from time to time the money I ask for travelling expenses. . . . That doesn't compromise you, eh?

. . . d.a.m.n it all, Roddy," he exploded, "I counted you were my friend to that extent!"

"That's all right, Jack," said I. "But a friend is one thing and an accomplice is another. What's your game with Farrell? You haven't told me yet, though you're asking what gives me the right to know."

He picked up his coat and hat and turned on me with a smile, very faint and weary and a trifle absent-minded.

"To tell you the truth," said he, as if searching for something at the back of his mind, "I haven't thought it out quite accurately.

It's near enough to warrant what preparations I'm making: but it hasn't the shape of a clean proposition--which is the shape my conscience demands. . . . Don't hurry me, Roddy: let me come around again to-morrow. . . . I can't invite you to my flat, because I'm making arrangements to shut it up, and these details get in the way, all the time. . . . Tell you what.--Meet me, you two, at Prince's Grill-room to-morrow, one-fifteen, and you shall have the plan of campaign on a half-sheet of notepaper. I'm a brute, Roddy, to bother you with these private affairs in the middle of your politics.

But one-fifteen to-morrow, if you can manage. Sure? Right, then.-- So long!"

He wagged, at the door, a benediction on us with his walking-stick and went down the stairs, I strolled to the window and watched him cross the turfed square of the court. Jimmy had taken up the poker and started raking the lower bars of the grate.

"Queer how quietly the Professor takes it," began Jimmy. "I was half-afraid--Oh, drop it, Otty, old man--I'm sorry!"

We had both wheeled about together, and I held a window cushion, poised, ready to hurl.

"Of course I didn't mean that, really!" pleaded Jimmy, parrying with the poker-point. "Sit down and let's talk. Is he mad? . . .

I don't like it."

NIGHT THE NINTH.

THE HUNT IS UP.

Well, I thought it over, and talked it over with Jimmy, and decided that, much as I loved Jack Foe, he'd have to be more explicit with me before I undertook this stewardship. You will say that, this being the only decent decision open, I might have done without the thinking and the talking. . . . And that's true enough. But, you see, I had lived with Jack pretty long and pretty close, and this was the first time I'd ever taken a miss with him. If anyone for the past ten or fifteen years had suggested to me, concerning Jack Foe, that a day might come when I shouldn't know where to find him, I--well, I should have lost my temper. It was inconceivable, even now. I told myself that, though he had expressly given me leave to invite Jimmy to the breakfast, he had taken a fit of reticence in Jimmy's presence and had shied off; that I should get more out of him when we were alone together. . . . Is that good English, by the way? Can two persons be alone? . . . Thank you, Polkinghorne--of course they can when they're real friends.

But that speculation wouldn't work, either: for again at Prince's, and again at Jack's invitation, we were to be a party of three. . . .

I tell you of these doubts because through them, and (you may say) by way of them, it came to me--my first inkling that something was wrong with the man.

Anyway, as it turned out, Jimmy and I might have spared ourselves the discussion: for when we reached Prince's the head-waiter (an old friend) brought me a letter. It had been delivered by District Messenger almost two hours before. It ran--Here it is: I have all the doc.u.ments but one, and I've sent home for that.

"Dear Roddy,--Sorry to do a shirk: but circ.u.mstances oblige me to take the boat-train, 9.45, ex Victoria. I have locked up the flat. The porter has the keys, with instructions to lend to n.o.body but you or the landlord.

"Address, for some little while, quite uncertain. I drew out a fair sum in circular notes and cash; enough to keep me solvent for some weeks. So you need not worry about the money.

"You needn't fash your consciences over the Plan, either.

I'll tell you about it in my next, written from the first place when I find leisure. I'll unfold--no, the word insults its beautiful simplicity. Apologies to Jimmy. Tell him to buy a copy-book and write in it _Experiment is better than Observation_.

"So long! A great peace has fallen on me, Roddy. 'I am one with my kind,' like the convalescent gentleman in _Maud_. 'I embrace the purpose of--whatever Higher Power set Farrell going--'and the doom a.s.signed.'

"Farrell is going strong. Yoicks!--Yours ever,"

"J.F."

I handed the letter across to Jimmy, and set myself to order, thoughtfully, something to eat.