His voice had sunk lower. He had dwelt on each detail with impassive deliberation.
"This week, Christine Manderson—without doubt the most beautiful woman of the three—was found in that crooked garden at Richmond, if possible in a more horrible condition than either of the others."
"You mean," exploded the inspector, "that the murderer of Colette d'Orsel at Nice twenty years ago also killed Margaret McCall in Boston ten years after?"
"I do," replied the low voice.
"And Christine Manderson here three days ago?"
"And Christine Manderson here three days ago. But this time there was a difference. An unfortunate chain of circumstances provided clear evidence against an innocent man—James Layton. I admit that as the case stood you had no option but to arrest him. But in doing so you committed the same mistake that your French and American brothers had committed before you. They had looked for a motive, and could not find one. You found a motive, and devoted yourself to the man with the motive. You should have looked for the Destroyer."
There was something of awe in the silence that followed, like the hush that succeeds the passing of a storm.
"My friend," said the inspector slowly, "what utterly monstrous thing are you telling me?"
Monsieur Dupont turned to him a face of massive innocence.
"Is it monstrous?" he said mildly. "If a man is born with a longing to kill elephants, he is a daring sportsman. If the longing is to kill beetles, he is a scientist. But if the inclination is to kill men—or women—he is a criminal lunatic. Why? If the desire to kill is not in itself monstrous, the desire to kill a particular thing, whatever it may be, cannot be monstrous. It can only be illegal. If it is dreadful to kill a young child, it must be dreadful to kill anything young. If it is cowardly for a man to kill a woman, it is cowardly for a man to kill the female sex in any shape or form. Yet, what scientist allows the matter of sex to interfere with the impalement of his beetle? Nor would he do so if his hobby were to impale human beings. If he searches for a beautiful beetle to kill, it only requires a broadening of his particular outlook for him to search for a beautiful woman to kill. There may be a perfectly sane and moral country in the world (although I have never heard of it) in which it would be criminal to kill the beetle, and scientific to kill the woman. I confess that a well-mounted collection of beautiful women would be very much more interesting to me than the finest collection of beautiful beetles. But if I have the one, I am made a member of a Royal Society—and if I have the other, I am executed. And the only reason for that is that the human beings make the laws, and not the beetles."