The Inmost Light
case, Salisbury, and I think it interests me all the more deeply because there does not seem the shadow of a possibility that I or any one else will ever know more about it. What do you think of it?'
'Well, Dyson, I must say that I think you have contrived to surround the whole thing with a mystery of your own making. I go for the doctor's solution: Black murdered his wife, being himself in all probability an undeveloped lunatic.'
'What? Do you believe, then, that this woman was something too awful, too terrible to be allowed to remain on the earth? You will remember that the doctor said it was the brain of a devil?'
'Yes, yes, but he was speaking, of course, metaphorically. It's really quite a simple matter if you only look at it like that.'
'Ah, well, you may be right; but yet I am sure you are not. Well, well, it's no good discussing it any more. A little more Benedictine? That's right; try some of this tobacco. Didn't you say that you had been bothered by something—something which happened that night we dined together?'
'Yes, I have been worried, Dyson, worried a great deal. IBut it's such a trivial matter—indeed, such an absurdity—that I feel ashamed to trouble you with it.'
'Never mind, let's have it, absurd or not.'
With many hesitations, and with much inward resentment of the folly of the thing, Salisbury told his tale, and repeated reluctantly the absurd intelligence and the absurder doggerel of the scrap of paper, expecting to hear Dyson burst out into a roar of laughter.
'Isn't it too bad that I should let myself be bothered
275
