"Where am I to send it?"
"That's the uncertainty, of course. From time to time I shall keep you informed. It may be to a suburban villa, it may be to some Poste Restante in the Sahara. That's as the chase goes. Like Baal I shall be on a journey, or I shall be pursuing. Yes, anyway I shall be pursuing.… All I ask is that, on getting a call, you'll send out, as best you can, such-and-such a sum to the address indicated. You have between £6000 and £7000 to play with. Probably you will be surprised at my moderation in demanding: but anyway I shall keep well within the limit. My memory and the bank-book usually balance to a pound or two."
"Then it's travel you're after?" I asked.
He nodded. "On a journey—and pursuing."
"Big game?"
"You may call it the biggest. Or I'm out to make it the biggest. … Jimmy, pass me the tobacco." He took the jar and, filling his pipe, lay back in the wicker chair with something like a groan. "Roddy, can't you see? These years, as you know, I've been working up my inquiry into rage in animals; beginning, that is, with animals, but always, as you know, intending to carry the inquiry up as soon as I had a solid working basis. Yes, it was all to proceed on induction—laborious tests, classifications—you know the system and that I didn't care if it took a lifetime. Well, all of a sudden, as I'm beginning to realise that, though the process is sound—must be sound—pursuit is probably hopeless because it must take twenty lifetimes—of a sudden, I say, this new way is revealed. Put it that I've come, all of a start, upon a little stream called Rubicon. Put it that I've burnt—no, put it that Farrell's myrmidons have burnt, at a stroke, every boat for me.
"—I might have gone on for years upon years, collecting statistics and ploughing out conclusions.… I begin to believe in the calculated interposition of Providence.… On the critical moment of transference the bridge breaks behind me. I have lost all my baggage. But, on the other shore, I have the jewel.
"—Listen, my boy.… The end of me may be empiricism.… They have destroyed eight years' work, and I have nothing left of it but memories of data which I can't produce for evidence—worthless, that is, for a man of my scientific conscience. En revanche and on the other side of the stream I find I have it; to carry on and test upon a fellow-man I have the diamond to cut all glass. With the brute beasts it was all observation, much of it uncertain. Henceforth it will be clean experiment. Farrell accused me of practising vivisection. As a matter of fact, I never did. Now I'm going to, and on Farrell."
Jimmy arose on pretence of seeking a match, and leaned his elbow on the mantelpiece while he stared into the fire.
"Oh, I say, Professor!" he blurted out. "Farrell, you know! He's no sort of class. He—he deserves punishing, but he don't mean any harm, if you understand." Here Jimmy faced about with an ingenuous smile. "I'm a bit of a fool myself, you see, and must speak up for my order."