The man within it was thinking deeply, sorting out and tabulating his impressions, sifting the irrelevant from what was of value, and making a précis of what he had gained.
There were a dozen minor notes to be made in his book when he reached home. The changing quality of the man's voice, the ebb and flow of uncontrolled emotion, the latent fear—"I must be present at the post mortem to-morrow," he said to himself as a new idea struck him. "There should be much to be learnt from an examination of the Peripheral Nerves. And the brain too—there will be interesting indications in the cerebellum, and the association fibres." . . .
The carriage swung again into the familiar parts of town. As he looked out of the windows at the lights and movement, Morton Sims forgot the purely scientific side of thought. The kindly human side of him reasserted itself.
How infinitely sad it was! How deep the underlying horror of this sordid life-tragedy at the close of which he had been assisting!
Who should say, who could define, the true responsibility of the man they were killing up there on the North London Hill?
Predisposition to Alcohol, Reversion, Heredity!—was not the drunken old solicitor, long since dust, the true murderer of the gentle-mannered girl in Hackney?
Lothian, the father of Gilbert Lothian the poet! the poet who certainly knew nothing of what was being done to the young man in the prison, who had probably never heard of his existence even.
The "Fiend Alcohol" at work once more, planting ghastly growths behind the scutcheons of every family!
A cunning murderer with a poisoned mind and body on one side, the brilliant young poet in the sunlight of success and high approbation upon the other!
Mystery of mysteries that God should allow so foul a thing to dominate and tangle the fair threads and delicate tissues of life!