The rank obscurity of the paths that foiled ambition and baffled desire will lead men into, has had many a detective’s bull’s-eye thrust into it, but for all that, one can’t survey jungle or mallee scrub by the fiercest storm of thunder and lightning. Given severity of purpose, a man must act some way or another. He may wait and wait, but at last he grows tired of sharpening his razor in vain. He must shave someone. According to his disposition his thoughts grow; from them bud the flower of design and the fruit of deed. In a wider life, we may dissipate our civil energies; but in a narrow groove, anger, hatred, and all uncharitableness do more than blossom. If a man harms us without knowing it, we may grin and endure, and hold our peace, and sharpen no knives; but when he hates us, and we him, the devil is in the imbroglio, and all the hideous contents of the witches’ pot will strengthen the incantation we mutter.
For this man set thorns in his subordinates’ path; he grew inhuman, bestial. They loathed their own forced civility; under their smooth tongues lurked malice. Their own jealousy and distrust were nothing when they thought of him. Warm feelings simulating comradeship thrilled them when they spoke subtly against him. They estimated his life-forces: how long should he live? They canvassed every change he showed: the marks of a later night than most sent up their hopes. When he was really unwell, his slackened pulses set theirs galloping; as he failed, they grew stronger; when he went on leave, they turned on each other. And then the beast came back so strong, so hearty, so healthy that they, almost sickened. They congratulated him palely, like two curs; and, more cur-like still, they made two homes like hell that night.
Who put it in their hearts, who instructed them, who gave them the unnatural courage to even think of his death otherwise than they had done? The seeds of all crimes are in all hearts, as the seeds of all high virtues, all noble desires. Crush a man, he may not turn; he lacks sufficient courage; but at last he will. These two men, independently of each other, determined to rid themselves of Hetherwick Coutts. They would kill him. And naturally enough they turned to poison. They studied in secret.
Meanwhile, Hetherwick Coutts behaved like a rampant housekeeper who, after keeping her bed, gets up to discover flue and dirt in every hole and corner in the house. This was wrong, and that was wrong; and why was it that when his back was turned everything went wrong? He licked the skin off everyone, and rubbed caustic into their wounds with great delight in seeing them squirm: he used one hemisphere of his big brain to do his work with, the other he employed to invent sarcasms. For two weeks he thoroughly enjoyed himself, and he was getting into his usual routine when he had worked up both Burke and Palmer to be as good as their bad resolutions.
The next best thing to making up your mind to do a good deed without any slackness, or slowness, or want of utter completion, is to do exactly the reverse, and get on the side of Ahriman without reserve. Not five minutes before I began this particular paragraph I read a letter which accused me of letting my imagination run away with my perceptive faculties. If that is true, I may be wrong in thinking that it must be far beyond any art, or the practice thereof, to have no conscience and no remorse and a passion for poisoning. So I think that the best moment Coutts’ two subordinates had in their life of miserable service was when they rose to the occasion and began to act on their real impulses. But the passion that leads to crime is usually like the dawn of a wet day. There is blood, and fire, and strange immortal-looking color in the east, but it dies in gray as the sea turns cold and wind and rain come together to blot out its evil glory. They were cowards, after all, these men, though they once dared to act: for they did dare.
They poisoned him both on the same day, at the same hour, for some strange sympathy linked them together. The rising heat of one’s blood, in the lower plane of man where crimes flourish redly, urged on the other; and when Hetherwick Coutts insulted them together in a tone that was like the hissing of hot metal and ice, with his Celtic and Saxon temperaments laid close in one bitter intention, they retorted vulgarly and in silence, with mixed poisons in his beer. They sat apart at the other end of the room and saw him empty his pint jug. Their blood ran cold, they shook, and whined excuses to their own souls. How sick they felt when he announced at half-past two that he did not feel well and would go home. Their throats were as dry as the fountains of the pit, and they repented for fear, and sweated ice. Before a man commits crimes he should test his courage, and not rush blindly into hell before he knows his endurance of torment.
With the same passion of fear came the same expression to their ghastly faces. They looked at each other stealthily, and ended by fearing each other. “Why did Burke look so?” said Palmer, and Palmer questioned himself equivalently. They went on paltry excuses to each other’s desks; they stared at each other out of the corners of their eyes. The avoidance that each felt in the other was confirmation. As the long hours went on, they were confirmed in their mutual suspicions. As the clock struck five, the others went like beasts of burden, glad at unyoking time. They remained and washed their hands as they would have washed their stained memories. Burke communed with himself; he would say he felt uninclined to go home; he would ask Palmer to dine with him. The same thought was in the slower brain of his colleague.
“If you will,” said Burke, “come and dine with me tonight at some restaurant. I don’t feel inclined to go home.”
“Very well,” replied Palmer, hoarsely. And Burke felt a little easier. “Would this man dine with him if he thought him what he was; if he had seen?”
So they went out together, and they walked down Pall Mall to Charing Cross.
“Let’s go into Gatti’s,” said Burke, and they sat at the best end of the long restaurant. Both maneuvered to get their faces most in shadow. But there was little for either, and Palmer got what there was.
Burke ordered a good dinner — soup and a vol-au-vent and a bird — and suggested champagne. Though he was meaner than Meanness itself, standing a shame to relative things in the realm of Noumena, Palmer was not surprised. And it made his entertainer’s heart sink that he was not.
They ate as if they were eating dry crusts in a prison, and looked at each other furtively. They drank as though they wanted to swamp hot fires within, and grew a little braver. But for all that, they looked strange, white-livered hounds, and not to be liked. The foolish young men and girls, and the foolish old men with girls by no means foolish in their generation, looked wise and great beside them. As there are different infinities, there are different degradations. To be greatly afraid after a deliberate act is to wallow in the sink of the nethermost pit. They drank on.
Palmer insisted on ordering more wine, for which he was to pay. What would have sent them both into the gutter a week ago was nothing to them now. They were strangely conscious that each drank enormously without getting affected They turned to liqueur brandy, and their sad and extraordinary sobriety made the waiter respect them. Such dry sticks of men, yet how they could drink! He reported their deeds to the manager, who inspected them to estimate their solvency. At last they went out together and the chill air affected them. They went down the Strand and turned into a wine shop to take a farewell. They affected friendship. Burke grew bold.
“To the devil with old Hetherwick Coutts!” said he.
“Yes,” said Palmer, pallid to the gums. His tongue clove to his mouth. Burke looked at him suddenly, and Palmer turned away; his boon companion followed him. They walked up towards Picadilly in silence.
“I wonder whether he is going home,” they said to themselves. “When he gets rid of me he will inform the police,” they murmured. They walked into Piccadilly, it was twelve o’clock, half-past twelve, and Walpurgis night. Palmer reeled at the next turning and stumbled a little up the narrow street. It leads to Vine Street; the police station is there at the back of St. James’s Hall, that home of music and morals. Burke had a sudden blind access of rage, he struck at Palmer fiercely and smote him on the jaw; the other retorted, and they rolled over, locked together. There was a rush of men and women, and oaths and yells and laughter roared over them as they fought on the pavement.