"Your morning's reading, if this is such," commented he, "is strikingly catholic. Plutarch, Snarleyow, the Opium Eater, Martin Chuzzlewit." Then came a host of tattered pamphlets, bound in shrieking paper covers, which the speaker handled gingerly. "'The Crimes of Anton Probst,'" he continued to read, "'The Deeds of the Harper Family,' 'The Murder of ——'" here he paused, tossed the pamphlets aside with contempt, sat down and drew the tobacco jar toward him.
"Some of the results of your forays into the basements of old booksellers, I suppose," he added, rolling a cigarette with delicate ease. "But what value you see in such things is beyond me."
Ashton-Kirk smiled good-humoredly. He took up some of the pamphlets and fluttered their illy-printed pages.
"They are not beautiful," he admitted; "the paper could not be worse and the wood cuts are horrors. But they are records of actual things—striking things, as a matter of fact—for a murder which so lifts itself above the thousands of homicides that are yearly occurring, as to gain a place outside the court records and newspapers, must have been one of exceptional execution."
"There is a public which delights in being horrified," said Pendleton with a grimace. "The things are put out to get their nickels and dimes."
"No doubt," agreed the other. "And the fact that they are willing to pay their nickels and dimes is, to my way of thinking, a proof of the extraordinary nature of the crime chronicled." The speaker dropped the prints upon the floor and lounged back in his big chair. "There is Plutarch," he continued; "the account of the assassination of Caesar is not the least interesting thing in his biography of that statesman. Indeed, I have no doubt but that the chronicler thought Caesar's taking off the most striking incident in his career; that the Roman public thought so is a matter of history.
"Countless writers have dwelt upon the taking of human life; some of them were rather commercial gentlemen who always gave an ear to the demands of their public, and their screeds were written for the money that they would put in their pockets; but others, and by long odds the greatest, were fascinated by their subjects. Both Stevenson and Henley were powerfully drawn by deeds of blood. Did you know they planned a great book which was to contain a complete account of the world's most remarkable homicides? I'm sorry they never carried the thing out; for I cannot conceive of two minds more fitted to the task. They would have dressed every event in the grimmest and most subtle horror; why, the soul would have shuddered at each enormity as shaped and presented by such masters."
Pendleton regarded his friend with candid distaste.
"You are appalling to-day," said he. "If you think it's the Greek tobacco, let me know. For I have to mingle with other human beings, and I'd scarcely care to get into your state of mind."
The strong, white teeth of Ashton-Kirk showed in a quick smile.