The Law of the Four Just Men · The Man Who Hated Earthworms (1/2)

The Man Who Hated Earthworms

“The death has occurred at Staines of Mr. Falmouth, late Superintendent of the Criminal Investigation Department. Mr. Falmouth will best be remembered as the Officer who arrested George Manfred, the leader of the Four Just Men gang. The sensational escape of this notorious man is perhaps the most remarkable chapter in criminal history. The ‘Four Just Men’ was an organisation which set itself to right acts of injustice which the law left unpunished. It is believed that the members were exceedingly rich men who devoted their lives and fortunes to this quixotic but wholly unlawful purpose. The gang has not been heard of for many years.”

Manfred read the paragraph from the Morning Telegram and Leon Gonsalez frowned.

“I have an absurd objection to being called a ‘gang,’ ” he said, and Manfred smiled quietly.

“Poor old Falmouth,” he reflected, “well, he knows! He was a nice fellow.”

“I liked Falmouth,” agreed Gonsalez. “He was a perfectly normal man except for a slight progenism⁠—”

Manfred laughed.

“Forgive me if I appear dense, but I have never been able to keep up with you in this particular branch of science,” he said, “what is a ‘progenism’?”

“The unscientific call it an ‘underhung jaw,’ ” explained Leon, “and it is mistaken for strength. It is only normal in Piedmont where the brachycephalic skull is so common. With such a skull, progenism is almost a natural condition.”

“Progenism or not, he was a good fellow,” insisted Manfred and Leon nodded. “With well-developed wisdom teeth,” he added slyly, and Gonsalez went red, for teeth formed a delicate subject with him. Nevertheless he grinned.

“It will interest you to know, my dear George,” he said triumphantly, “that when the famous Dr. Carrara examined the teeth of four hundred criminals and a like number of non-criminals⁠—you will find his detailed narrative in the monograph ‘Sullo Sviluppo Del Terzo Dente Morale Net Criminali’⁠—he found the wisdom tooth more frequently present in normal people.”

“I grant you the wisdom tooth,” said Manfred hastily. “Look at the bay! Did you ever see anything more perfect?”

They were sitting on a little green lawn overlooking Babbacombe Beach. The sun was going down and a perfect day was drawing to its close. High above the blue sea towered the crimson cliffs and green fields of Devon.

Manfred looked at his watch.

“Are we dressing for dinner?” he asked, “or has your professional friend Bohemian tastes?”

“He is of the new school,” said Leon, “rather superior, rather immaculate, very Balliol. I am anxious that you should meet him, his hands are rather fascinating.”

Manfred in his wisdom did not ask why.

“I met him at golf,” Gonsalez went on, “and certain things happened which interested me. For example, every time he saw an earthworm he stopped to kill it and displayed such an extraordinary fury in the assassination that I was astounded. Prejudice has no place in the scientific mind. He is exceptionally wealthy. People at the club told me that his uncle left him close on a million, and the estate of his aunt or cousin who died last year was valued at another million and he was the sole legatee. Naturally a good catch. Whether Miss Moleneux thinks the same I have had no opportunity of gauging,” he added after a pause.

“Good lord!” cried Manfred in consternation as he jumped up from his chair. “She is coming to dinner too, isn’t she?”

“And her mamma,” said Leon solemnly. “Her mamma has learnt Spanish by correspondence lessons, and insists upon greeting me with ‘habla usted Espanol Espanol?’ ”

The two men had rented Cliff House for the spring. Manfred loved Devonshire in April when the slopes of the hills were yellow with primroses and daffodils made a golden path across the Devon lawns. “Señor Fuentes” had taken the house after one inspection and found the calm and the peace which only nature’s treasury of colour and fragrance could bring to his active mind.

Manfred had dressed and was sitting by the wood fire in the drawing-room when the purr of a motorcar coming cautiously down the cliff road brought him to his feet and through the open French window.

Leon Gonsalez had joined him before the big limousine had come to a halt before the porch.

The first to alight was a man and George observed him closely. He was tall and thin. He was not bad looking, though the face was lined and the eyes deep set and level. He greeted Gonsalez with just a tiny hint of patronage in his tone.

“I hope we haven’t kept you waiting, but my experiments detained me. Nothing went right in the laboratory today. You know Miss Moleneux and Mrs. Moleneux?”

Manfred was introduced and found himself shaking hands with a grave-eyed girl of singular beauty.

Manfred was unusually sensitive to “atmosphere” and there was something about this girl which momentarily chilled him. Her frequent smile, sweet as it was and undoubtedly sincere, was as undoubtedly mechanical. Leon, who judged people by reason rather than instinct, reached his conclusion more surely and gave shape and definite description to what in Manfred’s mind was merely a distressful impression. The girl was afraid! Of what? wondered Leon. Not of that stout, complacent little woman whom she called mother, and surely not of this thin-faced academic gentleman in pince-nez.

Gonsalez had introduced Dr. Viglow and whilst the ladies were taking off their cloaks in Manfred’s room above, he had leisure to form a judgment. There was no need for him to entertain his guest. Dr. Viglow spoke fluently, entertainingly and all the time.

“Our friend here plays a good game of golf,” he said, indicating Gonsalez, “a good game of golf indeed for a foreigner. You two are Spanish?”

Manfred nodded. He was more thoroughly English than the doctor, did that gentleman but know, but it was as a Spaniard and armed, moreover, with a Spanish passport that he was a visitor to Britain.

“I understood you to say that your investigations have taken rather a sensational turn, Doctor,” said Leon and a light came into Dr. Viglow’s eyes.

“Yes,” he said complacently, and then quickly, “who told you that?”

“You told me yourself at the club this morning.”

The doctor frowned.

“Did I?” he said and passed his hand across his forehead. “I can’t recollect that. When was this?”

“This morning,” said Leon, “but your mind was probably occupied with much more important matters.”

The young professor bit his lip and frowned thoughtfully.

“I ought not to have forgotten what happened this morning,” he said in a troubled tone.

He gave the impression to Manfred that one half of him was struggling desperately to overcome a something in the other half. Suddenly he laughed.

“A sensational turn!” he said. “Yes indeed, and I rather think that within a few months I shall not be without fame, even in my own country! It is, of course, terribly expensive. I was only reckoning up today that my typists’ wages come to nearly £60 a week.”

Manfred opened his eyes at this.

“Your typists’ wages?” he repeated slowly. “Are you preparing a book?”

“Here are the ladies,” said Dr. Felix.

His manner was abrupt to rudeness and later when they sat round the table in the little dining-room Manfred had further cause to wonder at the boorishness of this young scientist. He was seated next to Miss Moleneux and the meal was approaching its end when most unexpectedly he turned to the girl and in a loud voice said:

“You haven’t kissed me today, Margaret.”

The girl went red and white and the fingers that fidgeted with the tableware before her were trembling when she faltered:

“Haven’t⁠—haven’t I, Felix?”

The bright eyes of Gonsalez never left the doctor. The man’s face had gone purple with rage.

“By God! This is a nice thing!” he almost shouted. “I’m engaged to you. I’ve left you everything in my will and I’m allowing your mother a thousand a year and you haven’t kissed me today!”

“Doctor!” It was the mild but insistent voice of Gonsalez that broke the tension. “I wonder whether you would tell me what chemical is represented by the formula Cl2O5.”

The doctor had turned his head slowly at the sound of Leon’s voice and now was staring at him. Slowly the strange look passed from his face and it became normal.

“Cl2O5 is Oxide of Chlorine,” he said in an even voice, and from thenceforward the conversation passed by way of acid reactions into a scientific channel.

The only person at the table who had not been perturbed by Viglow’s outburst had been the dumpy complacent lady on Manfred’s right. She had tittered audibly at the reference to her allowance, and when the hum of conversation became general she lowered her voice and leant toward Manfred.

“Dear Felix is so eccentric,” she said, “but he is quite the nicest, kindest soul. One must look after one’s girls, don’t you agree, señor?”

She asked this latter question in very bad Spanish and Manfred nodded. He shot a glance at the girl. She was still deathly pale.

“And I am perfectly certain she will be happy, much happier than she would have been with that impossible person.”

She did not specify who the “impossible person” was, but Manfred sensed a whole world of tragedy. He was not romantic, but one look at the girl had convinced him that there was something wrong in this engagement. Now it was that he came to a conclusion which Leon had reached an hour before, that the emotion which dominated the girl was fear. And he pretty well knew of whom she was afraid.

Half an hour later when the tail light of Dr. Viglow’s limousine had disappeared round a corner of the drive the two men went back to the drawing-room and Manfred threw a handful of kindling to bring the fire to a blaze.

“Well, what do you think?” said Gonsalez, rubbing his hands together with evidence of some enjoyment.

“I think it’s rather horrible,” replied Manfred, settling himself in his chair. “I thought the days when wicked mothers forced their daughters into unwholesome marriages were passed and done with. One hears so much about the modern girl.”

“Human nature isn’t modern,” said Gonsalez briskly, “and most mothers are fools where their daughters are concerned. I know you won’t agree but I speak with authority. Mantegazza collected statistics of 843 families⁠—”

Manfred chuckled.

“You and your Mantegazza!” he laughed. “Did that infernal man know everything?”

“Almost everything,” said Leon. “As to the girl,” he became suddenly grave. “She will not marry him of course.”

“What is the matter with him?” asked Manfred. “He seems to have an ungovernable temper.”

“He is mad,” replied Leon calmly and Manfred looked at him.

“Mad?” he repeated incredulously. “Do you mean to say that he is a lunatic?”

“I never use the word in a spectacular or even in a vulgar sense,” said Gonsalez, lighting a cigarette carefully. “The man is undoubtedly mad. I thought so a few days ago and I am certain of it now. The most ominous test is the test of memory. People who are on the verge of madness or entering its early stages do not remember what happened a short time before. Did you notice how worried he was when I told him of the conversation we had this morning?”

“That struck me as peculiar,” agreed Manfred.

“He was fighting,” said Leon, “the sane half of his brain against the insane half. The doctor against the irresponsible animal. The doctor told him that if he had suddenly lost his memory for incidents which had occurred only a few hours before, he was on the high way to lunacy. The crazy half of the brain told him that he was such a wonderful fellow that the rules applying to ordinary human beings did not apply to him. We will call upon him tomorrow to see his laboratory and discover why he is paying £60 a week for typists,” he said. “And now, my dear George, you can go to bed. I am going to read the excellent but often misguided Lombroso on the male delinquent.”

Dr. Viglow’s laboratory was a new red building on the edge of Dartmoor. To be exact, it consisted of two buildings, one of which was a large army hut which had been recently erected for the accommodation of the doctor’s clerical staff.

“I haven’t met a professor for two or three years,” said Manfred as they were driving across the moor, en route to pay their call, “nor have I been in a laboratory for five. And yet within the space of a few weeks I have met two extraordinary professors, one of whom I admit was dead. Also I have visited two laboratories.”

Leon nodded.

“Some day I will make a very complete examination of the phenomena of coincidence,” he said.

When they reached the laboratory they found a post-office van, backed up against the main entrance, and three assistants in white overalls were carrying post bags and depositing them in the van.

“He must have a pretty large correspondence,” said Manfred in wonder.

The doctor, in a long white overall, was standing at the door as they alighted from their car, and greeted them warmly.

“Come into my office,” he said, and led the way to a large airy room which was singularly free from the paraphernalia which Gonsalez usually associated with such workrooms.

“You have a heavy post,” said Leon and the doctor laughed quietly.

“They are merely going to the Torquay post office,” he said. “I have arranged for them to be despatched when⁠—” he hesitated, “when I am sure. You see,” he said, speaking with great earnestness, “a scientist has to be so careful. Every minute after he has announced a discovery he is tortured with the fear that he has forgotten something, some essential, or has reached a too hasty conclusion. But I think I’m right,” he said, speaking half to himself. “I’m sure I’m right, but I must be even more sure!”

He showed them round the large room, but there was little which Manfred had not seen in the laboratory of the late Professor Tableman. Viglow had greeted them genially, indeed expansively, and yet within five minutes of their arrival he was taciturn, almost silent, and did not volunteer information about any of the instruments in which Leon showed so much interest, unless he was asked.

They came back to his room and again his mood changed and he became almost gay.

“I’ll tell you,” he said, “by Jove, I’ll tell you! And no living soul knows this except myself, or realises or understands the extraordinary work I have been doing.”

His face lit up, his eyes sparkled and it seemed to Manfred that he grew taller in this moment of exaltation. Pulling open a drawer of a table which stood against the wall he brought out a long porcelain plate and laid it down. From a wire-netted cupboard on the wall he took two tin boxes and with an expression of disgust which he could not disguise, turned the contents upon the slab. It was apparently a box full of common garden mould and then Leon saw to his amazement a wriggling little red shape twisting and twining in its acute discomfort. The little red fellow sought to hide himself and burrowed sinuously into the mould.

“Curse you! Curse you!” The doctor’s voice rose until it was a howl. His face was twisted and puckered in his mad rage. “How I hate you!”

If ever a man’s eyes held hate and terror, they were the eyes of Dr. Felix Viglow.

Manfred drew a long breath and stepped back a pace the better to observe him. Then the man calmed himself and peered down at Leon.

“When I was a child,” he said in a voice that shook, “I hated them and we had a nurse named Martha, a beastly woman, a wicked woman, who dropped one down my neck. Imagine the horror of it!”

Leon said nothing. To him the earthworm was a genus of chaetopod in the section oligochaeta and bore the somewhat, pretentious name of lumbricus terrestris. And in that way, Dr. Viglow, eminent naturalist and scientist, should have regarded this beneficent little fellow.