“Perverse!” Michael echoed. “And what about your profession? That is really the most perverse factor in modern life.”
“But in this case,” Castleton argued, “the victim seems so utterly worthless.”
“Exactly,” said Michael. “But as society never interfered when he was passively offensive, why, the moment he becomes actively offensive, should society have the right to put him out of the way? They never tried to cure him for his own good. Why should they kill him for their own?”
“You want to strike at the foundations of the legal system,” said the barrister.
“Exactly,” Michael agreed; and the argument came to an end because there was obviously nothing more to be said.
Castleton promises to do all he could for Meats, and also to keep Michael’s name out of the business. As Michael walked down the stairs, it gave him a splendid satisfaction to think how already the law was being set in motion against the law. A blow for Inspector Dawkins. And what about the murdered girl? “She won’t be helped by Meats’ death,” said Michael to himself. “Society is not considering her protection now any more than it did when she was alive.” No slops must be emptied here: and as Michael read the ascetic command above the tap on the stairs he wondered for a moment if he were, after all, a sentimentalist.
Mrs. Cleghorne was very voluble when he reached Leppard Street.
“A nice set-out and no mistake!” she declared. “Half of the neighborhood have been peeping over my area railings as if the murder had been done in here. Mr. Cleghorne’s quite hoarse with hollering out to them to keep off. And it never rains but what it pours. There’s a poor woman gone and died here now. However, a funeral’s a little more lively than the police nosing round, though her not having a blessed halfpenny and owing me three weeks on the rent it certainly won’t be anything better than a pauper’s funeral.”
“What woman?” Michael asked.
“Oh, a invalid dressmaker which I’ve been very good to—a Mrs. Smith.”