2

So he had said it at last.

All the muscles of Krause seemed to tighten. For a space he was silent. Then he said: "I thought you killed him—until I made the autopsy."

"I saw you did at the time. That is why I insisted on the autopsy."

"But how did you manage it? How could you have killed him?"

"You suspected me?"

"Then—yes. Arsenic. There was that curious depression of his spirits before the end—and the fluttering heart. But my autopsy yielded nothing. There wasn't a trace. Of anything."

Carstall studied Krause's pensive profile.

"There were tons of arsenic in him. His body had to be soaked in it. After all that strychnine he'd had…Primitive, I admit, but it happened to be convenient."

"Then how?"

"Can you remember now after ten years, how, where and when you made your tests?"

"I've been over it time and again in my mind."

"That does not always improve a memory. But let me refresh the facts for you. We took our material from the body together. You had every facility in the hospital laboratory. Yes…But in the hospital patients die every day."

Krause turned his face to Carstall, in surprised interrogation.

"Yes. While you and your assistant were busy with your reagents," said Carstall, "I handed you fresh material. From another subject. I had it ready. Yes. You did all a man could do under the circumstances. And your assistants checked your results. I have always felt, Krause, you could not be trusted with a secret—with that secret anyhow. At that time your scientific habit of telling the truth might have caused a lot of trouble. Everything might have gone to pieces. Some adventurer would have got people excited. I might have been shot. And I did not want to be shot."

Krause made a weak sound of protest.

"I'm afraid I should have been shot. But now as this new regime settles down it does not matter. At last, thank the stars, I can talk. Even if you ran out now and denounced me nobody would believe you after all this time. It had to be done. He was hopelessly mad at last. He was frantic with vanity and fear. There was no other way with him…No way that I could imagine…I did right in killing him…He might have gone on disintegrating for years…And murdering and degrading other people…Putting everything wrong again. Spoiling his job. I killed him to save what he had done…

"Did you know, he was my schoolfellow? No? He was. I was head boy in the same school and I tried to prevent the other fellows calling him The Stink. It was a sort of link between us…

"I don't think I ever liked him very much, Krause, but he had, I know, a sort of unsatisfied desire to—to come it over me. I mattered to him. I felt that—and I confess it made—what I did to him—a little more difficult…And then there were the traditions of the profession. Good traditions. He was a patient…

"But I had seen his pencil list for the next massacre. He scribbled it in bed in the clinic…And there was that Chiffan story. That hardened my heart. Chiffan had been his closest friend. No one was safe from him at last. There was nothing for it but to finish him…I think about him a good deal. What did you think of him, Krause?"

"He impressed me as a very Great Man. I don't think anything can change that impression."

"I suppose…So far as there are great men…You admit he was mad?"

"At the last. But consider the immense things he did! The magnificent sweep of his imagination. His inflexible will!"

"I suppose he was a necessary evil."

"He was the supreme super–man. If you could look at him, not with the eyes of an old school–fellow but with the eyes of the world. Hundreds of millions worshipped him."

"You will never really grow up, Krause. Numbers mean nothing."

"Even now, forgive me, Carstall, I feel a sort of horror…At what I had to do to him…Even you…

"But then you are fifteen years younger than I am, Krause, and when you grew up he was already a great light in the sky…

"You would have told…

"I realise more than ever how right I was to keep my own counsel. And anyhow, you know, I had no right to drag you in. Or anyone else. Before or after. It was no slight to you, Krause. I had to do it on my own, absolutely on my own."