"So you think me a coward, do you?" he said. "I'll do you the justice to say that you're none."
My mind was working with an insight that it has never possessed before or since. The key to the man's psychology was in my hand at last.
All criminals are vain. In great criminals vanity assumes colossal proportions until it becomes a real madness. Criminologists call it megalomania. It is egotism fostered and indulged to the point of monstrosity, when all moral considerations are swept away, and the subject thinks himself superior to all law, and glories in his greatness.
Lord of himself, that heritage of woe! I think Byron said that.
"You've correctly expressed me," I told him.
"Perhaps your detective work has not gone so far as to inform you that I hold the Victoria Cross?" Yes! he was mad! No sane man of his extraction would have said that.
"It is a distinction above all others, Mr. Helzephron. And you'll have another very soon. Indeed, you'll never be forgotten. You'll be historic as the one V.C. who was degraded. They'll do it the day before they hang you at Pentonville, and it will be in the Gazette."
He grew quite white, whether from anger or shame I do not know. But I went on. Something inside me that was not myself seemed to be speaking.
"You've been living quite an artificial life, you see, surrounded by your amicable young friends and the artistic Mr. Vargus. You, no doubt, think of yourself as of a very glorious order. Making war on society, Ajax defying the thunder, King of the air, and all that sort of thing. I'll bet anything you've compared yourself to Napoleon a thousand times! It's the way the late Kaiser of Germany fell. It's called megalomania. But you aren't anything of the sort, you know. You are a cowardly thief, who steals and murders for the sake of his pocket. You asked me a question and I've answered it."
He heard each word. His eyes became glassy and his jaw dropped. For all the world he was like an evil child who hears the truth about itself, and all the power was wiped out of his face as chalk marks are wiped off a blackboard.