how far is that, doctor?"
"In the sense that all crime is a form of madness."
"Then you would call yourself – "
The broken sentence ended on a note as tactfully remote from the direct interrogative as practised speech could make it.
"In default of a recognized term," said Doctor Dollar, "which time will confer as part of a wider recognition, I can only call myself a crime doctor."
"A branch not yet acknowledged by your profession?"
"Neither by my profession nor by the law, Mr. Vinson; but both have got to come to it, just as surely as we all accept the other scientific developments of the day."
"But have you reduced your practise to a science, doctor?"
"I am doing so," said Doctor Dollar, with the restrained confidence which could not but impress one who knew the value of that quality in himself and in others. "I have made a start; if it were not so late I would tell you all about it. You are the Home Secretary of England, the man of all others whom I could wish to convert to my views. But already I have kept you up too long. If you would grant me an appointment – "
"Not at all," interrupted Mr. Vinson, as he settled himself even more comfortably in his chair. "The night is still young – so is my cigar. Pray say all you care to say, and say it as confidentially as you please. You interest me, Doctor Dollar; nor can I forget that I am much indebted to you."
"I don't want to trade on that," returned the doctor, hastily. "But it is an old dream of mine to tell you, sir, about my work, and how and why I came to take it up. I was not intended for medicine, you see; my people are army people, were Border outlaws once upon a time, and fighting folk ever since. My father was an ensign in the Crimea – Scots Fusiliers. I joined the Argyll and Sutherlands the year before South Africa – where, by the way, I remember seeing you with your Yeomen."
"I had eighteen months of it without a headache or a scratch."
"I wish I could say the same, Mr. Vinson. I was shot through the head at the Modder, ten days after I landed."
"Through the head, did you say?" asked the Home Secretary, lifting his own some inches.
The doctor touched the silver patch in his dark strong hair. "That's where the bullet came slinking out; any but a Mauser would have carried all before it! As it was, it left me with a bit of a squint, as you can see; otherwise, in a very few weeks, I was as fit as ever – physically."
"Wonderful!"
"Physically and even mentally – from a medical point of view – but not morally, Mr. Vinson! Something subtle had happened, some pressure somewhere, some form of local paralysis. And it left me a pretty low-down type, I can tell you! It was a case of absolute automatism – but I won't go into particulars now, if you don't mind."
"On no account, my dear doctor!" exclaimed the Secretary of State, with inadvertent cordiality. "This is all of extraordinary interest. I believe I can see what's coming. But I want to hear every word you care to tell me – and not one that you don't."
"It had destroyed my moral sense on just one curious point; but, thank God, I came to see the cause as well as to suffer unspeakably from the effect. After that it was a case of killing or curing oneself by hook or by crook. I decided to try the curing first. And – to cut a long yarn short – I was cured."
"Easily?"
"No. The slander may come home to roost, but I shall never think much of the London specialist! I've dropped my two sovereigns and a florin into too many of their itching palms, beginning with the baronets and knights and ending up with the unknown adventures. But not a man-Jack of them was ashamed to pocket his two guineas (in one case three) for politely telling me I was as mad as a hatter to think of such a thing as really was the matter with me!"
"And in the end?"
"In the end I struck a fellow with an open mind – but not in England – and if I said that he literally opened mine it might be an exaggeration, but that's all. He did go prospecting in my skull – risked his reputation as against my life – but we both came out on top."
"And you've been your own man ever since?"
Topham Vinson asked the question gravely; it would have taken as keen a superficial observer as himself to detect much difference in his manner, in his eyes, in anything about him. Doctor Dollar was not that kind of observer. To see far one must look high, and to look high is to miss things under one's nose. It is all a matter of mental trajectory. In the sheer height of his enthusiasm, the soaring visionary was losing touch with the hard-headed groundling in the chair.
"I was cured," he answered with tense simplicity. "It was a miraculous cure, and yet no miracle. Anybody could perform its like, given the nerve and skill. Yet it seemed to me a new thing; its possibilities were almost appalling in their fascination. I must not speak of them, for in a large measure they are only possibilities still. But I resolved to qualify, so that at least I might be in a position to do as I had been done by. I had already left the service; but my fighting days were not over. I was going to fight Crime as it had never been fought before!"
There was a challenge in the pause made here. But the listener did not take it up, and the harangue ended on a humbler note:
"I studied at St. Mary's under men whose names you know as well as they know yours. I was at Berlin under Winterschladen, and with Jens Jennsen in Stockholm. Before I was thirty I had put up my plate in Welbeck Street, and there I am still."
"And yet," said the Home Secretary, with a faint and wary smile – "and yet the possibilities are still only possibilities!"
"On the surgical side, yes; there I was misled by my own abnormal case. When another sudden injury makes a monkey of an honest man, I know where to take him; but the average injury is too gradual, too subtle for the knife. Congenital cases are, of course, quite hopeless in that respect. Yet there are ways of curing even what I regard as the very worst type of congenital criminal at the present day."
"I wish I knew of some!" said Mr. Vinson cheerily. "But what, may I ask, do you regard as the very worst type of congenital criminal at the present day?"
"The society type," replied the crime doctor without an instant's hesitation.
His host permitted himself to open his eyes once more.
"Your ideas are rather sensational, aren't they, Doctor Dollar?"
"It's rather a sensational age, isn't it, Mr. Vinson? Your twentieth-century criminal, with his telephone and his motor-car – for professional purposes – his high explosives and his scientific tools, has got to be an educated person, to begin with; and I am afraid there's an increasing number of educated people who have got to be criminals or else paupers all their lives. A vicious circle, I think you must agree?"
"If you can square it with the truth."
"Isn't it almost a truism, Mr. Vinson? When society women making a living out of bridge, traffic in tickets for Royal enclosures, charge a fat fee for a presentation at Court, and a small fortune for launching an unlikely family in their own set, there must be some reason for it apart from their own depravity. They are no more naturally depraved than I am, but their purse is perhaps even smaller, and their wants are certainly ten times as great. Cupidity is not the motive power; it's simple shortage of the needful – from their point of view. Society increases and multiplies in everything but money, and transmits its expensive tastes
