“A madman?”
“Yes, and yet he was sane.”
“That sounds like a paradox.”
“Man is a paradox. I know twenty men in London who are as mad as hatters, yet they are sane for all practical purposes.”
“Could you fancy Müller committing a murder?”
“Easily. He was of the intellectual criminal type.”
“Yet he was a great artist.”
“Though I have never seen any of his work—”
“Pardon me, you have, for that bust of Sir Anthony Gyde’s was, I believe, from his chisel.”
“Though I had never seen any of his work, judging from my recollection of the man, I would say he was a great genius. He had the brilliancy of eye, the concentration of gaze, which one rarely meets with in common-place people, and yet those eyes would, so to speak, fall apart, the concentration relax, the gaze become turned inward. Then it was that the essential madness of the man became visible to the man who could see. How many men of your acquaintance can see, Mr Freyberger?”