“I started it myself.”
“Did you overturn a lamp? Or did it begin in the chimney?”
“Well, if you must know,” said Northcote, “you shall hear the true facts. A lady called upon me last evening, and very kindly stayed the night. But this morning when I wanted to turn her out she refused to go. And further, she showed temper and made herself distinctly objectionable. Therefore I lost patience with her, and being a man of my hands I twisted her neck. But when I had managed to do that—by Jove, it is into the bank! we shall soon be able to reckon the damage by a cool million and it has only just begun!—but when I had managed to twist her neck, the question arose how to get rid of her remains. You see to have her unvirtuous person found in my room would not help this career at the bar I am just about to begin. How could I get rid of the body, that was the question? Now mark the really fertile mind of genius. Why not burn down the whole place? And that, you see, is exactly what I have done, although I will admit the idea is a plagiary from that excellent old author, Charles Lamb. You remember his Chinaman who burnt down the house of his parents every time he wanted to eat roast pig?”
“Well, North, you have a pretty mind, I must say,” said his companion to whom this recital, in the circumstances which attended it, had afforded keen amusement. “But you were always a bit of a lunatic at school. Now if you had tried to persuade me that you had insured your furniture, and that you had fired your place to keep out an execution, I might have tried to swallow it.”
“That is mediocrity all over, my son,” said Northcote, linking his arm through that of his companion. “It is always craving for hard facts. It cries aloud for hard facts; they are the staff of its life, its daily bread, but you have only to present hard facts to it in a somewhat unconventional form—my God, look at the bank!—in a somewhat unconventional form, and it flings them back in your face and asks you what you take it for.”
“My dear old lunatic, what are you talking about?”
“Merely this. Your alternative of the insurance company and the furniture is ingenious but lacking in comprehensiveness. The insurance company would, after the fashion of insurance companies, have insisted on an investigation into the cause of the disaster; they might even have preferred a charge against me to save themselves a few wretched shillings; litigation would almost certainly have ensued—there goes the roof of the hotel!—and litigation which touches myself is the last thing I should be willing to risk.”
“All this is very elaborate, North, but it is hardly convincing. Why are you so unwilling to risk litigation when your whole life—and a rather important one I expect—will be bound up in it?”
“The less my name is associated in the public mind with any shady transaction the better for my career.”
“A point of honor, North. You always had the reputation at school of being rather nice about it.”