One thing at any rate now seemed fairly certain, namely, that if what Dadley told me was true it was not likely that a man of Inspector Webster's penetration would pay much attention to the mutterings of an incipient megalomaniac. For, if I could guess at the signs at all, it was megalomania. I have not made a systematic analysis of those infinitely intricate mental states that we speak of conglomerately as "war nerves." I am not prepared to say that one man may bitterly grudge another something from the taking of which he himself has drawn back his hand, nor yet (to turn the case the other way round) that there is not on occasion just as heady and overweening an egotism on the part of the envied man. It is useless to generalize on these matters. It is also not quite decent. The least we can do is to mind our own business, the most to consider the given instance on its merits. It is simply as yet another curious by-product of our Case that I am speaking of Westbury.

Quite the most curious thing about it was that he was the only one of us all who had, in the sense of public duty, been wholly and entirely in the right throughout. But a little reflection showed me that it was precisely therein that the germ of his malady lay. It was because of this consistent technical rightness that he was now in process of arrogating to himself all the rightness in the world. No doubt he had been technically right when he had decided that his special knowledge of estates was of more solid use to his country than his skill at arms would have been. He had been technically right if, in the very uncommon circumstances, having reason to believe that a pistol had been moved that should only have been moved by the police, he had taken steps to ascertain that it really was a pistol Rooke had carried in his pocket. He had been right when, finding a bullet in his own house, he had instantly reported the matter to Inspector Webster. He had been right in demanding a post-mortem; right when Mackwith had all-unconsciously thwarted this; and oh, how right when, in that Chelsea back street, he had broken furiously out on me as an accomplice in the suppression of things that should have been brought to the light of day! Yes, it was all this rightness that was precisely the trouble. It is not good for any of us to be right so often as that. Personally, if I am right twice running there is no living with me. The real cure for Westbury would have been for him to find himself a few times in the wrong.

So, as I left Dadley's shop, I pictured him sitting there at his bedroom window, his furious eyes fixed on Esdaile's roof, his furious heart brooding on his rightness, and bearing the whole of the burden of our collective offense. What a contrast between this just man and our malefactor away in the country, Charles Valentine Smith himself—courting, care-free, and in a danger that appeared to be lessening with every hour that passed! Truly the Princes of this World seem to have the Kingdom and the Power and the Glory, and the Westburys to be persecuted like the prophets before them! I could understand old William Dadley feeling sorry for him. At the same time, I had not one single atom of sorrow for him myself.

For we are not ruled by these municipal virtues. We say we are; it is as much as our lives are worth to say anything else; but we know better. Wonderful Case, to bring all this out, to present so dramatically that single Question—the first man had to answer it and the last man will have to answer it—without which there is no society nor state nor government at all! Westbury had the whole weight of intellectual approval—and nothing whatever else! Unreservedly our whole nefarious conspiracy was to be condemned—yet something bade us stand unflinchingly by our friends!... I was wiser than I knew when I wrote that we all do precisely what we want to do and look for reasons afterwards. And if it be said that Society cannot be run on these lines, the answer is that it is our business to see that it is run. We have to serve God and Mammon though the God be the God of Injustice and the Mammon the Mammon of Righteousness. We must face both ways, square law with force. There is no escape from worshiping tradition even when we break it, from giving revolt our acknowledgment even as we trample it down. The world has got to go on and we to take sides.

Do you see why I laughed to see the hay our Case had made of the merits of our respective sides?

I was ruminating thus when a bodily collision brought me with a shock back to earth again. I had scattered somebody's armful of parcels, a tissue-paper bag with a couple of eggs in it among them. Instantly I was in a consternation of apology. Diving, I managed to rescue a small loaf from rolling from the kerb and to save from a passing foot a packet of cooked ham. Then, flushed and humbled, I heard a laugh.

"Look here—I don't so much mind your upsetting my grub, but I do mind being cut," said a voice—Rooke's voice.