“He stooped even to that?” It was not a question, but an exclamation of incredulity. “Are you sure of your conclusions? Perhaps if I had made no suggestion last night—had not sowed the seed of suspicion. . . .”
“There can be no doubt,” declared Vance softly. “Mr. Markham intends to arrest Mr. Arnesson when he returns from the university. But to be frank with you, sir: we have practically no legal evidence, and it is a question in Mr. Markham’s mind whether or not the law can even hold him. The most we can hope for is a conviction for attempted kidnapping through the child’s identification.”
“Ah, yes . . . the child would know.” A bitterness crept into the old man’s eyes. “Still, there should be some means of obtaining justice for the other crimes.”
Vance sat smoking pensively, his eyes on the wall beyond. At last he spoke with quiet gravity.
“If Mr. Arnesson were convinced that our case against him was a strong one, he might choose suicide as a way out. That perhaps would be the most humane solution for every one.”
Markham was about to make an indignant protest, but Vance anticipated him.
“Suicide is not an indefensible act per se. The Bible, for instance, contains many accounts of heroic suicide. What finer example of courage than Rhazis’, when he threw himself from the tower to escape the yoke of Demetrius?[39] There was gallantry, too, in the death of Saul’s sword-bearer, and in the self-hanging of Ahithophel. And surely the suicides of Samson and Judas Iscariot had virtue. History is filled with notable suicides—Brutus and Cato of Utica, Hannibal, Lucretia, Cleopatra, Seneca. . . . Nero killed himself lest he fall into the hands of Otho and the Pretorian guards. In Greece we have the famous self-destruction of Demosthenes; and Empedocles threw himself in the crater of Etna. Aristotle was the first great thinker to advance the dictum that suicide is an anti-social act, but, according to tradition, he himself took poison after the death of Alexander. And in modern times let us not forget the sublime gesture of Baron Nogi. . . .”
“All that is no justification of the act,” Markham retorted. “The law——”
“Ah, yes—the law. In Chinese law every criminal condemned to death has the option of suicide. The Codex adopted by the French National Assembly at the end of the eighteenth century abolished all punishments for suicide; and in the Sachsenspiegel—the principal foundation of Teuton law—it is plainly stated that suicide is not a punishable act. Moreover, among the Donatists, Circumcellions and Patricians suicide was considered pleasing to the gods. And even in More’s Utopia there was a synod to pass on the right of the individual to take his own life. . . . Law, Markham, is for the protection of society. What of a suicide that makes possible that protection? Are we to invoke a legal technicality, when, by so doing, we actually lay society open to continued danger? Is there no law higher than those on the statute books?”
Markham was sorely troubled. He rose and walked the length of the room and back, his face dark with anxiety. When he sat down again he looked at Vance a long while, his fingers drumming with nervous indecision on the table.