“The Lepworth school affair is a very celebrated case in the realm of sexual psychology. The schoolmaster, a young man named Woods, aroused England over sixty years ago by the brutal and cruel punishments he inflicted upon his pupils. He managed to escape to America. There is no doubt the man was sexually unbalanced. To-day we would call it a pathological condition. But standing on that shelf was a genealogy of the Woods family—that branch of it. And that schoolmaster, who had to flee England, was the grandfather of the minister.
“Now I do not know much about Woods. He was forced out of England and came to this country. He made money, we do know. But the fact he built this church tells a good deal. It was, no doubt, his gesture to the Almighty—his attempt to win forgiveness for the sins of the flesh. To-day we know another thing. Any textbook upon heredity will tell you that children inherit their qualities more from their grandparents than their parents. And here was the minister, and in his blood was that unbalanced make-up of the English schoolmaster. In his case it made him a bigot without friends and also whipped him into queer reform movements. It also explains the horrible books I found in his case. And I might add that I found the missing volumes of the De Sade.
“The genealogy told more. The minister's father married a woman named Wright. After the minister was born she was placed in an insane asylum, where she died. You can see from the standpoint of heredity what took place. The sadistic strain in the blood of the grandfather mixed in the unbalanced blood of the woman—and the minister was the result. From such a type you look for your odd reforms—your fantastic crimes.”
In the silence which followed there came the plaintive voice of the chief:
“But still I don't understand why he killed Warren.”
“Well,” came Bartley's voice, “let us start at the beginning. Here you have the minister. His heredity is very bad. His entire life, that is, the things he did, showed that he was a sad neurotic. He hated pleasure; he hated all things which normal people enjoy. In fact most of the wild, rabid fanatics are the same type. But with him there was a double danger.
“We know to-day that there is not much difference between the person who reacts violently in a sexual manner and the one who goes to a wild extreme in religious matters. Our psychology has proven they are alike, from hundreds of cases. You had here an unbalanced man. The anti-evolution group, of which he was a member, had read Warren's statement—the last proof of evolution had been found. Now to him that would be absurd; and, at the same time, he would look upon Warren as an enemy of God.
“Let us suppose he brooded over the matter day after day. He might have even prayed that Warren would be found wrong. Then to add flame to his unbalanced thoughts came the news that Warren was to write his book in the very place where the minister lived. That did not improve matters. So one day he went to see Warren. I think I can picture what happened.”
“What?” came the chief's eager voice.
“I think the minister went into Warren's library with the purpose of begging that he would not publish his book. In his unbalanced mind he would see nothing out of the way in such a request. You can picture what Warren must have said. It was like oil to a flame. As the minister looked at the scientist he would see him as the very enemy of society. Then, without a doubt, something snapped in his brain. He rose to say ‘good-by’ and suddenly stabbed him. In his first wild frenzy he thought of himself as doing the work of God. The cross was a symbol of that. And when he wrote the word ‘Ananias,’ the same thought was in his mind.