"It won't be murder in this case," said Meldon. "It will be a perfectly just execution, and I shan't do it myself. I'm a clergyman, and not an executioner. But I'll see that it's done once I'm perfectly satisfied that he deserves it."
"He had a row with the rector at a vestry meeting," said the Major, "about the heating of the church."
"That settles it," said Meldon. "I ask for nothing more. The man who's capable of annoying the poor old rector, who has chronic bronchitis and must keep the church up to a pretty fair temperature—"
"What Simpkins said was that the church wasn't hot enough."
"It's all the same," said Meldon. "The point is that he worried the rector, who's not physically strong enough to bear it, and who certainly does not deserve it. I didn't mind his attacking you or Doyle. You can both hit back, and if you were any good would have hit back long ago in a way which Simpkins would have disliked intensely. But a clergyman is different. He can't defend himself. He is obliged, by the mere fact of being a clergyman, to sit down under every species of insult which any ill-conditioned corner-boy chooses to sling at him. There was a fellow in my parish, when I first went there, who thought he'd be perfectly safe in ragging me because he knew I was a parson. No later than this morning a horrid rabble of railway porters, and people of that sort, tried to bully me, because, owing to their own ridiculous officiousness, I was forced to travel first class on a third-class ticket. They thought they could do what they liked with impunity when they saw I was a clergyman. You don't know how common that kind of anti-clerical spirit is. Simpkins is evidently swelled out with it. It's going now, like an epidemic. Look at France and Italy. The one chance we have of keeping Ireland free from it is to isolate each case the moment it appears. By far the wisest thing we can do is to have Simpkins killed at once."
"I don't quite see how you are going to manage it, J. J., without being hanged yourself."
"Is he a married man?"
"No, he isn't."
"Then the matter's perfectly simple. I don't think I mentioned to you, Major, that I travelled down in the train to-day with a professional murderess."
"Do try to talk sense, J. J."