Chapter IX: Section TWO: Analysis (3)

I next obtained the address of the labourer, Harold Coffin. His wife was at home, and informed me that I should find her husband at work carting some timber which had fallen in the recent gale. If I followed the lane leading down past “The Shack” I could not miss him. Following these directions, I came upon him on the outskirts of a small wood. He was very ready to tell me all he knew, and led me at once to the spot, not very far away, where he had last seen my father.

It was, of course, too late in the season for _Amanita rubescens_, but the site which he pointed out seemed suitable enough for it, and he also, without being prompted, mentioned that he had often seen fungi growing there, of a reddish-brown colour with grey patches on the top. I took _Edible and Poisonous Fungi_ from my pocket and asked him to look through it. He hesitated some time between the pictures of _Amanita rubescens_ and _Amanita muscaria_, and finally said he thought it might be one of those two. The colour of _Amanita muscaria_ seemed a bit overdone, he thought, but then, pictures in books wasn’t always right, was they, sir? The wood, locally known as Five-Acre Wood, was a great place for toadstools, and he had often seen my father gathering the great _Hepatica_ fungus from the trees—the huge liver-coloured lumps commonly known as “Poor Man’s Beefsteak.” Coffin was quite clear that my father was actually gathering fungi, and not merely looking for them. My father had spoken to him and said something about, “Getting my supper, you see, Coffin. You ought to try some yourself; you’re missing a treat.” Coffin had often thought of those cheerful words when he heard of the poor gentleman’s death, and had taken them as a warning.

Coffin said he knew Mr. Lathom quite well by sight, having met him from time to time in the public-house when having a friendly glass. He had never seen him in the Five-Acre Wood but once, and that was with Mr. Harrison, about a week before the latter’s death. His own work had lain in and about the Five-Acre during the first fortnight of October—he was employed by Mr. Carey—all this round here was Mr. Carey’s land—and he thought he should have seen Mr. Lathom if he had come there alone at any time.

Having thanked and rewarded Coffin, I made my way to “The Shack.” Except for the removal of the bedclothes and other objects required for the inquest it was exactly as it had been left at the time of the death. The broken bedstead, with its terrible witness to my poor father’s death-agony, still stood in a corner of the bedroom. Even Lathom’s painting materials lay huddled in a corner. I suppose he had forgotten to remove them. A few roughly-daubed canvases in oil contrasted strongly with my father’s delicate water-colours, of which I found a number put away in a drawer. Dust had gathered thickly everywhere.

I made a careful search on shelves and in drawers for any notes or papers that might throw light on my problem, but found nothing except a few bills and the last letter my father had received from me. There were one or two novels, a number of local guide-books and botanical books of reference, and some artist’s catalogues. Delving among these, I at length came on a large-scale map of the district, with notes upon it in my father’s handwriting. He had apparently used it as a kind of botanical chart, marking on it the localities in which various plants and fungi were to be found. Five-Acre Wood was clearly shown, and upon it my father had made a small cross accompanied by the note “_Amanita rubescens_.” I looked for any mention of _Amanita muscaria_, but could see none; either my father had not found it in the district, or else he had concerned himself with edible varieties only.

One question, therefore, seemed clearly answered. My father _had_, without question, been gathering fungi for his supper on the 17th October, and the place where he had gathered them was a place in which he was accustomed to find _Amanita rubescens_.

I could find nothing further of any interest at “The Shack,” though I spent a whole day there. I passed the night at the inn, and next day departed to Bovey Tracey to check Lathom’s movements.

My first interview was with the taxi-driver. This man’s name is William Johnson and he lives in the High Street. He perfectly recollects having driven to Manaton on Thursday, 17th October, and taken Lathom to catch the 8.13. The circumstance had been strongly impressed upon his mind by the catastrophe that followed it so closely, and the fact that he had actually visited “The Shack” and seen the victim, only two days before the discovery of the body, has naturally made him a kind of local hero.

He is positive that my father and Lathom parted on the best of terms. They shook hands, and my father said: “Well, hope you have a good journey. See you back on Saturday. What train do you think you’ll catch?” Lathom answered that he wasn’t quite sure, and added: “Don’t wait up for me if I’m late.”

This answers one of our questions, and makes it quite clear that at least one person besides my father knew that Lathom was expected back on the Saturday.

My next question was, At what time had Lathom ordered his taxi? The man remembered this, too. A telephone message was put through to him from Manaton at about nine o’clock on the Wednesday evening. He can verify this, if necessary, by his order-book.

This is interesting. It makes it seem likely that Lathom only decided to make this trip to town at the last moment—in fact, after hearing my father express his intention of gathering _Amanita rubescens_ the following day.

Finally, I inquired whether Johnson had actually seen Lathom get into the train. By a stroke of good fortune he was able to answer this question definitely. He had to put a parcel on the train for a printer at Bovey Tracey, and, while doing this, he had seen Lathom take his seat in a third-class smoker. As the train went out, Lathom leaned out of the window and shouted something to a porter—some question, he thought, about changing at Newton Abbot.

I hired this man’s taxi, which was a reasonably good one, and interviewed the railway staff at the three intermediate stations between Bovey Tracey and Newton Abbot. Here, as was natural, the men found some difficulty in remembering the events of three months ago. I could not find anybody who recollected seeing Lathom. In each place I asked for a name of anybody in the village who might be likely to have a car or motor-cycle for hire, and went to see the proprietors of the vehicles, but without result. Nowhere could I find any record of such a transaction.

Newton Abbot is a larger place, and I anticipated difficulty. On the contrary, and greatly to my surprise, I got on to Lathom’s trail almost immediately. No sooner had I mentioned his name to the station-master than he said at once:

“Oh, yes, sir—that was the gentleman who lost a pocket-book last October. Did he ever find it?”

Taking this cue as it presented itself, I replied that he had not, and that, being in the neighbourhood, I had promised to call and ask about it.

“Well, sir,” said the station-master, “we made inquiries all down the line, and had several men out searching, but they never found it. They would have brought it to me if they had, for they were all decent fellows and Mr. Lathom offered a reward. I’m afraid some tramp must have picked it up, sir. There’s a lot of them about these days and they’re not over-honest.”

“No doubt that was it,” said I. “Let me see—whereabouts did he say he lost it?”

“Said he thought it must have fallen out of his breast-pocket when he was leaning out of the window. He couldn’t say exactly where, but he thought it must be just the other side of Heathfield. Here’s the note I made in my book, you see, sir, and here’s the gentleman’s name and address that he wrote down himself.”

I recognised the handwriting in which Lathom had written out Munting’s address for me.

“Well, it was very tiresome,” I said, “but I am sure you did all you could. There was money in the pocket-book, I suppose?”

“Yes, sir, and the gentleman’s ticket to town. He was in quite a way about it, because he said he hadn’t enough money on him to book again. So I spoke to the ticket-collector, and he said he could make it all right on the train, and Mr. Lathom could settle it with the Company when he got to town.”

These inquiries had taken the greater part of the day, so I decided to stay that night in Newton Abbot and interview the ticket-collector the next day. He was still on the same train and perfectly recollected the affair of Lathom and his ticket. I went on up to Paddington with him, and there the friendly collector directed me to the official in the Inquiry Bureau who had dealt with the matter on the previous occasion. After considerable referring back and forth and ringing up the head office, it was clearly established that Lathom had duly arrived by the 1.15, without his ticket, had explained the circumstances and had left his name and address, promising to send the ticket on if it turned up. As a matter of fact, it never had turned up, but as the booking-clerk at Bovey Tracey had clearly remembered issuing it and had identified Lathom on his next visit as being the person to whom the ticket had been issued, the Company had accepted the explanation and allowed the matter to drop.

This was something of a blow. I had really reckoned more than I realised on finding that Lathom had left the train at some point and doubled back to Manaton. There was just one possibility. He might have hurried across to the down platform and taken the 1.30, which would land him back at Bovey Tracey at about half-past six. This would have meant very quick work, for the explanation to the authorities at Paddington must have taken him nearly ten minutes. And at the other end he would have had to get, somehow or other, to Manaton and then do the three miles out to “The Shack,” and then snatch his opportunity to rush in, unseen, and drop the poison into the stew while my father’s back was turned. It seemed almost impossible. Apart from everything else, it was inconceivable that he should not have been seen, either at Newton Abbot or at Bovey Tracey. He would have had to pass the barrier, and he would have had to hire a car, for nothing else would have got him down to “The Shack” before supper-time.

I turned it over and over in my mind and could make nothing of it. It seemed that I must abandon this whole theory. I returned to my hotel in a mood of deep depression, and found there, waiting for me, a letter from Munting, which I append here in its place.

50. _John Munting to Paul Harrison_

DEAR HARRISON,

A damnably awkward thing has happened. Lathom turned up here last night. The girl showed him straight into my study and I was caught without hope of escape.

He looked nervous and irritable, and came straight to the point.

“Look here,” he said, “has this fellow Harrison been round to see you?” I hesitated, and he went on at once, “Can’t you say yes or no? What’s the good of lying about it?”

“Yes,” I said, “he came round.”

“What did he want?”

I said you were naturally anxious to have all available details about your father’s death.

“Yes, that’s all very well,” he cut in, angrily. “What have you been saying to him? Have you been discussing my private affairs?”

“I don’t think,” I answered cautiously, “I told him anything that he didn’t know already.”

“Have you been spreading scandals about Mrs. Harrison and me? Come on, out with it!”

“Sit down,” I said, “it’s no good shouting at me like that.”

“Sit down be damned! I suppose you’ve been chattering as usual. I should have thought you would have the decency to shut up about what wasn’t your business. I warned you about him, didn’t I? Why couldn’t you keep the fellow out?”

“My dear man,” I said, “if I’d refused to see him, he’d have thought there was something very suspicious about the business.”

“So I suppose you blabbed it all out like a good, virtuous little boy.”

“As a matter of fact,” I said, “he seemed to know all about it.”

“Nonsense! How could he know, unless you told him?”

“Possibly,” I said, “he gathered it from your manner, or from Mrs. Harrison. Besides,” I added, feeling that attack was my only possible form of defence, “I thought you told me it was all over and done with. Isn’t it? I assured Harrison that it was. I had only your word to go on. If it wasn’t all over, what the devil did you mean by taking me down to Devon with you? You know perfectly well that if I’d known it was still going on, wild horses wouldn’t have taken me down there.”

This brought him up all standing.

“Yes, well,” he said, “of course it’s all over. But why did you have to tell him anything about it at all?”

“Look here,” I said, “you’ve not been straight with me, and I don’t believe you now. I’ve had quite enough of this. You’ve dragged me into this business again. I’ve been your scapegoat once and I’d fed up. Do you expect me to go on taking the blame for your idiotic love-affairs? I’ve got my wife to consider.”

I was afraid he would go back to the very difficult question of how you got to know about the intrigue. I didn’t want to tell him about the letters, which you had shown me more or less in confidence, and yet I felt a perfect cad for not warning him of his danger. It seemed abominable to have listened to such suspicions against a man, without giving him the chance to clear himself. Fortunately, he abandoned this point.

“What does the fellow want?” he went on. “What’s he think he’s going to find out? The thing’s clear enough, isn’t it?”

“Well,” I said, “to tell you the truth, Lathom, when I came to consider the thing I couldn’t help suspecting——”

“Suspecting! My God, _you’ve_ got your beastly suspicions now. What in the devil’s name do _you_ suspect?”

“I couldn’t help suspecting,” I went on, as steadily as I could, “that old Harrison had found out something and committed suicide.”

“Oh!” said Lathom. “Well, what if he did? The man was a ——” (a word which I will spare you). “The best thing he could do was to clear out from a place where he wasn’t wanted. Damn good riddance. A good thing if he did have the sense to see it.”

“That’s a pretty rotten thing to say, Lathom.”

“Don’t be such a damned hypocrite.”

“I mean it,” I said. “You’re behaving like an absolute swine. Harrison was damned decent to you, and you seem to think that just because you can paint better than he could, you are perfectly justified in seducing his wife and then accepting his hospitality and driving him to commit suicide.”

“I hadn’t anything to do with it,” he retorted, “he was all right when I left him. You ask anybody down there who saw him. He was as cheery and friendly as could be. I’m not responsible for what he did behind my back. I was in London all the time. I can prove it.”

“I don’t see that it needs proving,” said I.

“Oh, don’t you?” he burst out violently. “Well, I do. You’ll be saying next that I had something to do with his death.”

He stopped suddenly and I caught him looking sideways at me, as if to see how I should take this suggestion. It turned me quite cold, and I had a curious sensation as if my stomach had turned right over.

“Well,” I said, “if anybody heard you talking like this, they might be excused for thinking so.”

“Oh, might they!”

“It’s dangerous to talk about wanting people out of the way, you know,” I went on, watching him.

“Punk!” he said. “Now, I’ll tell you, Mr. Good Little Moral Boy, I’ll tell you just exactly where I was all the time—all the time, do you hear? And then you can come and beg my pardon.”

“I don’t want——” I began.

“No, but I do. Got that? I do. And you may as well make a note of it. On Thursday, now—Thursday—have you got that?—I was at the dentist’s at two o’clock, see? First thing I did when I got to town. You can verify that, I suppose? Or do you imagine I have bribed the dentist? You’d better write his address down. Get on with it.”

“Really, Lathom——”

“No, you won’t. Any excuse not to believe me, I suppose. Well, I’ll do it for you. Dentist, two o’clock, name and address, here you are. Seven o’clock—you’ll allow that I couldn’t get to Devon and back between two-thirty and seven, I suppose—or do you imagine I chartered an aeroplane?”

“I suppose nothing of the sort.”

“Damn it, suppose what you like. I can give you what I was doing at four o’clock. Come now, that’s close enough, isn’t it? I had tea with Marlowe. He’s a painter, but even you will allow he’s honest enough. Tea with Marlowe, four o’clock. At seven, I dined at the ‘Bon Bourgeois,’ and paid by cheque—you can confirm that, you know—and went on to the first night of Meyrick’s show. He saw me there. Is that good enough?”

He was writing all these times and places down, digging the pencil savagely into the paper. I said:

“You seem to remember it all very clearly.”

“Yes, that’s one in the eye for you, isn’t it, my lad? Sorry and all that, but you asked for it. I slept that night at the studio. I’m afraid I’ve only Mrs. Cutts’ word for it, and, of course, she’d say anything.”

“Very likely,” said I.

“That gives you a gleam of hope, doesn’t it? But seeing I didn’t get home till four ack emma, after celebrating with Meyrick’s crowd—ask them—it doesn’t leave much margin, does it? Particularly as I was up again at nine o’clock.”

“That’s very unusual,” I said, trying to speak lightly. “Whatever did you get up at nine for?”

“To spite you. And incidentally, to sign for a beastly registered letter. Providential, wasn’t it?”

“Obviously,” said I.

“At ten-thirty I went to see my agent. You know him, don’t you?” I admitted knowing the agent.

“I lunched at Lady Tottenham’s. Went to see her about a sitting at twelve and stayed on. Anything fishy about Lady Tottenham?”

“Nothing, except her husband’s income. Sardines, isn’t it?”

“Damned witty. You ought to put that in your next book. Then I went round to Winsor & Newton’s and paid a bill. By cheque. And ordered some stuff. No doubt they will be happy to show you their books.”

I was silent.

“Dinner at Holtby’s. Very stately and all that. Old boy thinks of presenting a portrait to Liverpool Town Hall. Most respectable party. Went on to the Aitchbone—not so respectable, but full of people. Spent the night with the Goodman boys. Breakfasted there. Came on. Looked you up, and you had me under your own bloody inquisitive eye for the rest of the day. Now then!”

I asked him why he was so anxious to tell me all this.

“To tell your pal Harrison,” he snapped back. “He seems blasted anxious to stick his nose into my concerns. Tell him to keep out of it. I don’t like the swine.”

“I don’t see,” I said, “why you should work yourself up into this extraordinary state of mind because a man has made a few ordinary inquiries about his father. Unless, of course, you have anything special to hide.”

This seem to sober him down. He pulled his face into something more nearly resembling amiability and then suddenly began to laugh.

“I’m sorry. I lost my temper rather. Anything to hide? Good God, no—except that I’m sorry Harrison has got on to—that business with Margaret, you know. She must have let something out, accidentally. But I’ll swear the old man never knew a word about it. Not a damn thing. He was as right as rain—best of pals, and all that. But I don’t like that pup of his.”

I put down the pen with which I had been fidgeting all this time, got up and went and stood by him on the hearth-rug.

“Lathom,” I said, “why did you come here?”

He looked at me, and for a moment I thought he was on the point of getting something off his chest. I had a horrible fear of what it might be. If he had spoken, I really do not know what I should have said or done. I might—I don’t know. I was really quite horribly frightened.

But nothing came of it. He shifted his gaze and said, in a curious, embarrassed way:

“I’ve told you. I wanted to know what you’d done with Harrison—to find out how the matter stood. Afraid it’s been awkward for you. I didn’t quite realise. It can’t be helped. He’d have to know sometime, anyhow. I’d better be going.”

He held out his hand. In the state things were in, I could not take it. Either I was being a perfect Judas Iscariot, in which case I hadn’t the face to give him my hand, or else _he_ was, in which case I felt I would rather be excused. It was all so involved that at the moment I was completely incapable of deciding anything.

“Oh!” he said. “I’ve said one or two things, haven’t I? All right. Sulk about it if you like. I’m damned if I care.”

He slammed out. After a moment I went after him. “Lathom!” I called.

I don’t know what I meant to say to him. The only answer was the hang of the outer door.

Honestly, Harrison, I don’t know what to make of it. I don’t know whether I’ve been a skunk or a moral citizen. I don’t know whether I’ve warned a guilty man, or betrayed an innocent one, or the other way round. But I’m feeling like hell about it, because—well, frankly, because I cannot believe that an innocent man would have such a watertight alibi.

It’s perfectly obvious he came here to ram the alibi down my throat. But it _is_ an alibi. I’m enclosing the paper with the names and addresses he wrote down so pat. You can investigate it all, if you like, but it’s certain to be sound. He knew it. He was perfectly confident. Besides——

Anyway, I won’t touch it. It makes me sick.

I’ve finished that statement, by the way. Here it is. I hope to God the whole thing comes to nothing and I never hear of it again. I ask you, as a favour, to leave me out of it if you can.

Yours very truly,
J. MUNTING

51. _Statement of Paul Harrison_ [Continued]

Disregarding the hysterical tone of his last few sentences, I felt that on the whole Munting was right, and had behaved with more discretion and public spirit than I had credited him with.

It was obvious to me that Lathom was losing his nerve. As to his guilt, I had by now no shadow of a doubt. The blatant way in which he had marked his trail, right up from Manaton to London and back again, and his determination to let Munting know all about it, were actions entirely inconsistent with the carelessness of an innocent man. The trouble was that he was now on the alert. At any minute he might take alarm and bolt. On this account, I decided to waste no valuable time in checking his alibi. The fact that he had produced it with such confidence left me no hope of breaking it down; moreover, some of the inquiries were of a sort that could only be made satisfactorily by the police.

It was evident that I must abandon the whole idea of a return to Manaton. Only one possibility was left, namely, that the poison had been left in such a place that my father was bound to add it to the dish of fungi himself; and that this manœuvre had been carried out before Lathom left for London.

I knew that all the foodstuffs in “The Shack” had been carefully analysed and found harmless, with the exception of the half-eaten dish of fungi itself. I was, therefore, forced to conclude that the poison had been added to the beef-stock in which the fungi were stewed. Anything else would be dangerous, for the presence of muscarine in, say, the salt or the coffee would be a circumstance so suspicious as to impress even the coroner’s jury.

There was nothing difficult about this. The stock would have been prepared from Monday’s delivery of shin of beef. It was my father’s habit always to keep a pan of stock simmering on the hob. By Thursday morning there would probably be just sufficient left to cook his evening meal, after which he would boil up the new supply of shin for the rest of the week.

Now, in what form would the poison have been added? Not in the solid form, for my father would have noticed the presence of fungi in his stock. But a teacupful of poisonous liquid might easily have been poured in at any moment. I was, therefore, brought back to my previous idea that Lathom had managed to procure the _Amanita muscaria_ and decoct the poison during my father’s absence from the hut.

But how I was ever to prove this, I did not know. I had plenty of evidence of motive and opportunity, but nothing that could put the crime beyond any reasonable doubt in the minds of twelve good and true jury-members. And besides, I was by no means satisfied of Lathom’s ability to identify _Amanita muscaria_ with certainty. Was there no easier and more reliable method by which he might have obtained the stuff? Was it possible, for instance, to buy muscarine? If so, and if one could trace the sale to Lathom, there would be genuine evidence of criminal intent. For what innocent reason could an artist require muscarine?

The difficulties of the thing stared me in the face. Even if muscarine was procurable commercially (which I thought very unlikely, for, so far as I know, it has no medicinal use), it was impossible for me, as a private individual, to broadcast an investigation among all the chemists in the country. Only the police could do that, and I could not set the police to work without producing the very evidence which was the object of the search. There were not only chemists—there were all the research laboratories too. The thing seemed hopeless.

At this point the word “laboratories” struck a chord in my mind. Had not there been something in the Munting correspondence about a laboratory?

I had not paid much attention to the passage when I first read it, because my mind had been taken up with the idea of Lathom’s having gathered the fungus on the spot. And, indeed, the facts had been so buried in a lot of vague twaddle about the origin of life and other futile Muntingesque speculations that I had skimmed the pages over in disgust, but when I turned back to the letter I cursed myself for not having given it fuller consideration before.

Two facts emerged very clearly from the welter of surrounding nonsense:

1. That Lathom had been shown a collection of poisons,
apparently kept where anybody could easily get at them; and

2. That Leader had drawn the special attention of the party to
certain synthetic, or laboratory-made poisons, indistinguishable
by analysis from natural vegetable products.

Here at last was something definite. Supposing that a bottle of muscarine had by any chance formed part of the collection, what was easier than for Lathom to have helped himself to it?

I did not know whether it was possible for an outside person to penetrate the laboratories of St. Anthony’s College unchallenged, but this I could easily find out by the simple process of going there. Probably I should only have to ask to see some doctor or student. Lathom, for instance, could have asked to see this man Leader, whom he already knew. Leader might very well be able to give us some help in the matter. Munting was my point of contact with Leader, and the next step was obviously to go round and get a note of introduction.

Munting, of course, showed great unwillingness to interfere in the matter. His interview with Lathom seemed to have upset him badly. At length, however, I persuaded him that he had a duty in the matter.

“If you refuse to help me,” I said, “and I am able to prove the murder, you will be something very like an accessory after the fact.”

Mrs. Munting, who, in practical common sense, is worth ten of her husband, agreed with this point of view.

“It would be very unpleasant if you got into trouble about it, Jack. I do think if Mr. Lathom really has done this dreadful thing, you oughtn’t to stand in the way of getting it found out. A man like that is very dangerous. And they say that when a poisoner has once committed a murder and got away with it, he is very likely to try it again. It might be you or young Mr. Harrison next time.”

“Do you really think so?” he muttered, unhappily.

“I do. And oh, Jack! Do think of the awful cruelty of letting that poor man die such a painful, lingering death, all alone in that place, without a soul to come near him. Anyone who could do that would be an absolute monster. I don’t care what excuse he had.”

“That’s been haunting me,” said Munting—and he did look very white and ill. “All right, Harrison. I’ll see it through. Look here, I’ll come along to the place with you.”

We walked in complete silence till we came to St. Anthony’s. There were numbers of people passing in and out through the wide entrance, and nobody took the slightest notice of us.

“I think the labs. are up this staircase,” said Munting, leading the way. “And here’s where we hang up the hats and coats,” he added, rattling his umbrella into a hat-stand placed inside the heavy swinging door.

“Is that usual?” I inquired.

“We did it last time,” said Munting, “I remember it distinctly. And as the idea is to see whether it’s feasible to roam unchallenged about the place, we may as well look as much like the inhabitants as possible. If Lathom did come here poison-hunting, he’d scarcely have omitted that precaution.”

Having thus shed the outward insignia of visitors, we found ourselves in a wide corridor, smelling faintly of chemists’ shops, with numbered doors on either side. A few men in white overalls passed us, but took no notice of us. We walked briskly, as though with a definite objective, and, selecting at random a door near the end of the corridor, pushed it boldly open.

A big room, full of sinks and tables and well-lit by large windows, presented itself to our view. A student sat at a bench near us with his back to the door. He was boiling something in a complicated apparatus of glass tubes over a Bunsen burner. He did not look up. Over by the window four men were gathered round some sort of experiment, which apparently absorbed all their attention. A sixth man, mounted on a pair of steps, was searching for something in a cupboard. He glanced round as we entered, but, seeing that we did not look likely to assist him in finding what he wanted, ignored us, and, coming down, went up to the student with the apparatus.

“What’s become of the . . . ?” (something I didn’t catch) he asked irritably.

“How should I know?” demanded the other, who was pouring some liquid into a funnel and seemed annoyed at the interruption. “Ask Griggs.”

We backed out again, unregarded, and tried another door. Here we found a small room, with a solitary, elderly man bending over a microscope. He removed his eye from the lens and looked round with a scowl. We begged his pardon and retired. Before we had closed the door, his head was back at the eyepiece again, while his right hand, which had never stopped writing, continued to take notes.

We intruded, with equal ease and equally unchallenged, into a lecture-room, where forty or fifty students were gathered round a demonstrator at a blackboard; into two more laboratories, one empty and the other containing two absorbed men and a dead rabbit, and finally into yet a fourth laboratory, where a dozen or so students were laughing and talking and seemed to be waiting for somebody.

One of these, having nothing particular to do, came forward and asked if we wanted anybody in particular. Munting replied that he was looking for Mr. Leader.

“Leader?” said the student. “Let me see. He’s a second-year man, isn’t he? Where’s Leader, anybody know?”

A young man in spectacles said he fancied Leader was in Room 27.

“Oh, yes, to be sure. Try 27—along the corridor on the right, up the steps and the second door on the left. If he’s not there, I expect they’ll be able to tell you. Not at all, pleasure.”

We found our way to Room 27, and there, among a group of students, found Leader, who greeted Munting with loud demonstrations of joy. I was introduced, and explained that I was anxious for a little information, if he could spare the time.

He led us to a quiet corner, and Munting reminded him of his previous visit with Lathom and the conversation about synthetic poisons. He was only too delighted to assist us, and led us along at once to another room, inhabited only by the usual couple of absorbed men in a far corner, who took no notice of us.

“Here you are,” said Leader, cheerfully, displaying an open cupboard, stacked with glass bottles. “Convincing demonstration of the way we’ve got Mother Nature beat. Synthetic thyroxin—some stuff you produce in your own throat, handy and available without the tedious formality of opening you up. A small daily dose gives you pep. Camphor, our own brand, cures cold and kills beetles. Take a sniff and admire the fine, rich, natural aroma. Cinchona, all my own work, or, strictly speaking, Professor Benton’s. Adrenalin—that’s the stuff to make your hair stand on end; full of kidney punch. Muscarine—not so pretty as scarlet toadstools, but just as good for giving you tummy-ache. Urea——”

“That’s very interesting, isn’t it?” said Munting.

“Very,” said I. My hand shook a little as I took the bottle from Leader. It was a squat, wide-mouthed glass jar, about half-full of a whitish powder, and clearly labelled “Muscarine (Synthetic) C_{5}H_{15}NO_{3}.”

“It’s rather deadly, I suppose,” I added, with as much carelessness as I could assume.

“Fairly so,” said Leader. “Not quite as powerful as the natural stuff, I believe, but quite disagreeable enough. A teaspoonful would settle your hash all right, and leave a bit over for the dog. Nice symptoms. Sickness, blindness, delirium _and_ convulsions.” He grinned fondly at the bottle. “Like to try some? Take it in a little water and the income-tax won’t bother you again.”

“What’s it made of, Leader?” asked Munting.

“Oh—inorganic stuff, you know—all artificial. I couldn’t say offhand. I can look it up if you like.” He hunted in a locker and produced a notebook. “Oh, yes, of course. Cholin. You start with artificial cholin.”

“What’s that? Something to do with the liver?”

“Well, yes, in the ordinary way. But you can make it by heating ethene oxide with triethylamine. That gives you your cholin. Then you oxidise it with dilute nitric acid—the stuff you etch with, you know. Result, muscarine. Pretty, isn’t it?”

“And if you analyse it again chemically, could you tell the difference between that and the real stuff?”

“Of course not. It _is_ the real stuff. I don’t think we’ve got any of the natural muscarine about the place, or you’d see. But there’s no difference at all, really. Nature’s only a rather clumsy kind of chemist, don’t you see. You’re a chemical laboratory; your body, I mean—so am I—so’s everybody—only rather a careless and inaccurate one, and given to producing unnecessary flourishes and ornaments, like your face, or toadstools. There’s no _need_ to make a toadstool when you want to produce muscarine. If it comes to that, I don’t suppose there’s any real need for your face—from a chemical point of view. We could build you up quite easily in the labs, if we wanted to. You’re mostly water, you know, with a little salt and phosphates and all that kind of thing.”

“Come, Leader, that won’t quite do. You couldn’t make me walk and talk, could you?” (This was Munting, of course.)

“Well, no. There’s a trifling hitch there, I admit—always supposing anybody wants to hear your bright conversation.”

“Then there is something—what I call Life—which you can’t imitate.”

“Well, yes. But I daresay we shall find it some day. It can’t be anything very out-of-the-way, can it? I mean, there’s an awful lot of it knocking about. The trouble is, one doesn’t seem to be able to find it by chemical analysis. If one could, you know, it would probably turn out to be something quite ordinary, and then one could make it.”

“The lost formula of _Rossum’s Universal Robots_, eh?”

“Very likely,” said Leader, “that’s a play, isn’t it? I never go to high-brow plays. All rot, you know—more in your line. But there it is. Analyse you and you’re just so much dead matter. Analyse toadstools, and you get this muscarine stuff. Makes one think a bit less of the marvels of Nature, don’t it?”

“Except,” said Munting, who had by now mounted on his usual hobby-horse, “except for the small accident of Life, which is, as you say, a triviality, no doubt, but yet——”

I interrupted him.

“We don’t want to waste Mr. Leader’s time with metaphysics.”

“No,” said Munting, obstinately, “but what I want to know——”

A tremendous clattering of feet in the corridor heralded the throwing open of the door and the irruption of a large number of young men in overalls.

“Oh, Lord,” said Leader, “we’ll have to clear out.” He looked at his watch. “I say, do you mind if I barge off? There’s a demonstration I’ve simply got to attend. Nuisance, but I’m rather behindhand with Dimmock’s subjects. Must mug it up somehow. Awfully pleased to have seen you. Can you find your way out?”

“Just a moment,” said Munting. “You remember the fellow I brought with me last year—Lathom—the artist?”

“Yes, of course—the fellow who was so keen on poisons. Asked such a lot of questions about the right dose, and was so struck with our synthetic stuff. Didn’t seem able to get over the fact that you couldn’t distinguish artificial muscarine from the natural product by chemical analysis. Very intelligent bloke I thought he was—for an artist. I remember him perfectly. Why?”

“Have you seen anything of him since?”

“No. Why?”

“I just wondered. He said something once about looking you up.”

“Well, he didn’t. Perhaps he came in the vac. There’s nobody here then, except the swots and the dunces trying to cram themselves for the exams. Tell him to come in term-time. I really must buzz along. I say, come and feed one night, won’t you?”

Munting promised to do so, and Leader escaped, cannoning violently into the demonstrator as he dashed out. We followed, not wishing to be caught and interrogated.

“That was Benton,” said Munting, looking back at the closing door. “I wish we could have had a word with him. If Leader——”

“About the origin of life, I suppose? You’re cracked about the origin of life. It’s the origin of death we’re investigating. We’ve got what we came for. It’s clear enough that anybody might have walked in and helped himself to a dose of that stuff. Look at those places we went into. No one to stop us—and it’s term-time, too. In the vac. the place is absolutely deserted. If Lathom was over here in the vac.—and he was. Don’t you remember those letters of Margaret Harrison’s? He was here in July.”

“Yes,” agreed Munting, thoughtfully. “Yes, I quite see that. But the difficulty is to _prove_ it. Just because it’s so easy to get in, it’s a million to one against anybody having noticed you. And you can’t expect a jury to accept a vague possibility like that. If there was any analysable difference between natural and synthetic muscarine, then, of course, you would have something genuine to go upon. Because it would be quite impossible to eat synthetic muscarine by accident—except in a laboratory. But apparently there is no difference.”

This sobered me. I had been feeling that we were well on the way to solve the problem. But now I saw very clearly that we were just as far away as ever. No jury in the world would accept this involved and unsubstantiated theory. True, people are ready enough to believe that an adulterer is very likely a murderer as well. But if it comes to the question of probability, which will they rather believe? That a man elaborately stole a rare and incomprehensible laboratory product which none of them have ever heard of, and elaborately administered it under involved and peculiar circumstances? Or that an eccentric experimenter with “unnatural” foods accidentally poisoned himself with toadstools? The answer is obvious.

Moreover, to obtain a conviction, there must be no doubt possible. The murder theory must be overwhelmingly _more_ likely than the accident theory. Judges are careful to point this out.

I was as certain that Lathom had poisoned my father with synthetic muscarine as that I was alive. But I began to be equally certain that Lathom had hit upon a method of murder that was utterly and completely proof against proof.

52. _Statement of John Munting_

[Additional and concluding portion.]

This damned business of Lathom’s.

People write books about murders, and the nice young men and women in them enjoy the job of detecting. It is a good game and I like reading the books. But the emotions of the nice young people are so well-regulated, or so perfunctory, or something. They don’t feel like worms and get put off their dinners when they have succeeded in squeezing a damaging admission out of a friend. They don’t seem to suffer from fits of retching terror for fear they should find out something definite. Nor, while struggling with these complicated miseries, do they ever have to fulfil contracts with publishers. Sometimes they are filled with a stern sorrow—a nice, Brutus-like sentiment. I envy their nerves.

My nerves went back on me about the time of our visit to St. Anthony’s. I took a kind of hysterical pleasure in pointing out that we had no proof of the murder. I didn’t want proof. I didn’t want to know. It was like writing one of those horrible letters which call for a decisive answer one way or another. You post it and wait, and you know that one morning you will see your correspondent’s handwriting on an envelope, and feel as hollow as a piece of bamboo. And you wait. Nothing comes. And after a time you say, “It’s been lost in the post. Now I need not know. Not now, at any rate. I can still pretend that it’s all right. Nothing will happen to-day. I can eat my dinner and listen to the wireless—and perhaps it will go on like that for ever.”

The answer to the Lathom problem seemed to have been lost in the post. We did not talk about it at home. My wife knew that I winced from it. It made other subjects impossible, too. Women, for instance, and the way they influence their lovers—we would start as far off as Gordon Craig’s theatre-masks or _Gryll Grange_ and Lord Curryfin’s _echeia_, and before we had gone far, the figure of Clytemnestra would come bobbing over the horizon, and I would be talking hurriedly, dismissing it, rushing into technicalities about epode and stasimen, or about the chorus or the machines—anything. Or if Elizabeth merely asked what we should have for dinner, it seemed difficult to think of anything that was not flavoured with mushrooms or founded on beef-stock. We lived for a whole week on fish once, so sensitive did our minds become.

I got over it, more or less, after a time and, mercifully, Lathom let me alone. It was not till March that a faint reminding echo of the thing sounded faintly over the breakfast-table. I got a note from Mr. Perry, the parson to whom I had once lent a volume of Eddington. At the sight of his name I got a kind of painful twitching in the sore place.

The note was to invite me to dinner. An old college friend of his, the extremely celebrated Professor Hoskyns, was coming over to spend the evening with him. Hoskyns is, of course, a very brilliant physicist, and Perry thought it would interest me to meet him. One or two other people were coming as well. If I could put up with a very simple meal, he thought we should enjoy a really enjoyable talk.

My first instinct was to refuse. I hated the idea of going into the district and of seeing anybody even remotely connected with the Harrisons. But the idea of meeting Hoskyns was fascinating. I have that kind of vaguely inquiring mind that likes to be told what is going on, even though I could not be troubled to make a single experiment myself, and should not have the vaguest idea what experiment to make. A pap-fed, negative, twentieth-century mind, open on all sides and wind-swept by every passing gust. Elizabeth thought that a chat with a bunch of scientific men would do me good. We need not, she said, mention the Harrisons. In the end, I accepted, and I rather think Elizabeth must have conveyed some sort of warning to Perry, for the Harrisons were not mentioned.

Perry’s shabby little sitting-room seemed crowded with men and smoke when I arrived. Professor Hoskyns, long, thin, bald, and much more human-looking than his Press photographs, was installed in a broken-springed leather armchair and called Perry “Jim.” There was also a swarthy little man in spectacles, whom they both called “Stingo,” and who turned out to be Professor Matthews, the biologist, the man who has done so much work on heredity. A large, stout, red-faced person with a boisterous manner was introduced as Waters. He was younger than the rest, but they all treated him with deference, and it presently appeared that he was the coming man in chemistry. Desultory conversation made it clear that Matthews, Hoskyns and Perry had been contemporaries at Oxford, and that Waters had been brought by Matthews, with whom he was on terms of the heartiest friendship and disagreement. A thin youth, with an eager manner and an irrepressible forelock, completed the party. He sported a clerical collar and informed me that he was the new curate, and that it was “a wonderful opportunity” to start his ministry under a man like Mr. Perry.

The dinner was satisfying. A vast beef-steak pudding, an apple-pie of corresponding size, and tankards of beer, quaffed from Perry’s old rowing-cups, put us all into a mellow humour. Perry’s asceticism did not, I am thankful to say, take the form of tough hash and lemonade, in spite of the presence on his walls of a series of melancholy Arundel prints, portraying brown and skinny anchorites, apparently nourished on cabbage-water. It rather tended to the idea of: “Beef, noise, the Church, vulgarity and beer,” and I judged that in their younger days, my fellow-guests had kept the progs busy. However, the somewhat wearisome flood of undergraduate reminiscence was stemmed after a time with suitable apologies, and Matthews said, a little provocatively:

“So here we all are. I never thought you’d stick to it, Perry. Which has made your job hardest—the War or people like us?”

“The War,” said Perry, immediately. “It has taken the heart out of people.”

“Yes. It showed things up a bit,” said Matthews. “Made it hard to believe in anything.”

“No,” replied the priest. “Made it easy to believe and difficult not to believe—in anything. Just anything. They believe in everything in a languid sort of way—in you, in me, in Waters, in Hoskyns, in mascots, in spiritualism, in education, in the daily papers—why not? It’s easier, and the various things cancel out and so make it unnecessary to take any definite steps in any direction.”

“Damn the daily papers,” said Hoskyns. “And damn education. All these get-clever-quick articles and sixpenny text-books. Before one has time to verify an experiment, they’re all at you, shrieking to have it formulated into a theory. And if you do formulate it, they misunderstand it, or misapply it. If anybody says there are vitamins in tomatoes, they rush out with a tomato-theory. If somebody says that gamma-rays are found to have an action on cancer-cells in mice, they proclaim gamma-rays as a cure-all for everything from old age to a cold in the head. And if anybody goes quietly away into a corner to experiment with high-voltage electric currents, they start a lot of ill-informed rubbish about splitting the atom.”

“Yes,” said Matthews, “I thought I saw some odd remarks attributed to you the other day about that.”

“Wasting my time,” said Hoskyns. “I told them exactly what they put into my mouth. You’re right, Jim, they’d believe anything. The elixir of life—that’s what they really want to get hold of. It would look well in a headline. If you can’t give ’em a simple formula to cure all human ills and explain creation, they say you don’t know your business.”

“Ah!” said Perry, with a twinkle of the eye, “but if the Church gives them a set of formulæ for the same purpose, they say they don’t want formulæ or dogmas, but just a loving wistfulness.”

“You’re not up-to-date enough,” said Waters. “They like their formulæ to be red-hot, up-to-the-minute discoveries.”

“Why, so they are,” said Perry. “Look at Stingo here. He tells them that if two unfit people marry, their unfitness will be visited on their children unto the third and fourth generation, after which they will probably die out through mere degeneration. We’ve been telling them that for three or four thousand years, and Matthews has only just caught up to us. As a matter of fact, you people are on our side. If _you_ tell them the things, they may perhaps come to believe in them.”

“And possibly act on them, you think?” said Matthews. “But we have to do all the work for them, just as you have to do the godly living.”

“That’s not altogether true,” said Perry.

“Near enough. But we do get on a bit faster, because we can give reasons for things. Show me a germ, and I’ll tell you how to get rid of plague or cholera. Call it Heaven’s judgment for sin, and all you can do is to sit down under it.”

“But surely,” struck in the curate, “we are expressly warned in Scripture against calling things judgments for sin. How about those eighteen on whom the Tower of Siloam fell?”

“If it was anybody’s sin,” said Perry, “it was probably the carelessness of the people who built the tower.”

“And that’s usually a sin that finds somebody out,” added Waters. “Unfortunately, the sinner isn’t always the victim.”

“Why should it be?” said Matthews. “Nature does not work by a scheme of poetical justice.”

“Nor does God,” said Perry. “We suffer for one another, as, indeed, we must, being all members one of another. Can you separate the child from the father, the man from the brute, or even the man from the vegetable cell, Stingo?”