THE third winter I was off collecting in Central America, and didn’t get back till Dredge’s course had been going for a couple of months. The very day I turned up in town Archie Lanfear descended on me with a summons from his mother. I was wanted at once at a family council.

I found the Lanfear ladies in a state of incoherent distress, which Archie’s own indignation hardly made more intelligible. But gradually I put together their fragmentary charges, and learned that Dredge’s lectures were turning into an organized assault on his master’s doctrine.

“It amounts to just this,” Archie said, controlling his women with the masterful gesture of the weak man. “Galen has simply turned round and betrayed my father.”

“Just for a handful of silver he left us,” Mabel sobbed in parenthesis, while Mrs. Lanfear tearfully cited Hamlet.

Archie silenced them again. “The ugly part of it is that he must have had this up his sleeve for years. He must have known when he was asked to succeed my father what use he meant to make of his opportunity. What he’s doing isn’t the result of a hasty conclusion: it means years of work and preparation.”

Archie broke off to explain himself. He had returned from Europe the week before, and had learned on arriving that Dredge’s lectures were stirring the world of science as nothing had stirred it since Lanfear’s “Utility and Variation.” And the incredible outrage was that they owed their sensational effect to the fact of being an attempted refutation of Lanfear’s great work.

I own that I was staggered: the case looked ugly, as Archie said. And there was a veil of reticence, of secrecy, about Dredge, that always kept his conduct in a half-light of uncertainty. Of some men one would have said off-hand: “It’s impossible!” But one couldn’t affirm it of him.

Archie hadn’t seen him as yet; and Mrs. Lanfear had sent for me because she wished me to be present at the interview between the two men. The Lanfear ladies had a touching belief in Archie’s violence: they thought him as terrible as a natural force. My own idea was that if there were any broken bones they wouldn’t be Dredge’s; but I was too curious as to the outcome not to be glad to offer my services as moderator.

First, however, I wanted to hear one of the lectures; and I went the next afternoon. The hall was jammed, and I saw, as soon as Dredge appeared, what increased security and ease the interest of his public had given him. He had been clear the year before, now he was also eloquent. The lecture was a remarkable effort: you’ll find the gist of it in Chapter VII of “The Arrival of the Fittest.” Archie sat at my side in a white rage; he was too clever not to measure the extent of the disaster. And I was almost as indignant as he when we went to see Dredge the next day.

I saw at a glance that the latter suspected nothing; and it was characteristic of him that he began by questioning me about my finds, and only afterward turned to reproach Archie for having been back a week without notifying him.

“You know I’m up to my neck in this job. Why in the world didn’t you hunt me up before this?”

The question was exasperating, and I could understand Archie’s stammer of wrath.

“Hunt you up? Hunt you up? What the deuce are you made of, to ask me such a question instead of wondering why I’m here now?”

Dredge bent his slow calm scrutiny on his friend’s quivering face; then he turned to me.

“What’s the matter?” he said simply.

“The matter?” shrieked Archie, his clenched fist hovering excitedly above the desk by which he stood; but Dredge, with unwonted quickness, caught the fist as it descended.

“Careful — I’ve got a Kallima in that jar there.” He pushed a chair forward, and added quietly: “Sit down.”

Archie, ignoring the gesture, towered pale and avenging in his place; and Dredge, after a moment, took the chair himself.

“The matter?” Archie reiterated with rising passion. “Are you so lost to all sense of decency and honour that you can put that question in good faith? Don’t you really know what’s the matter?”

Dredge smiled slowly. “There are so few things one really knows.”

“Oh, damn your scientific hair-splitting! Don’t you know you’re insulting my father’s memory?”

Dredge stared again, turning his spectacles thoughtfully from one of us to the other.

“Oh, that’s it, is it? Then you’d better sit down. If you don’t see at once it’ll take some time to make you.”

Archie burst into an ironic laugh.

“I rather think it will!” he conceded.

“Sit down, Archie,” I said, setting the example; and he obeyed, with a gesture that made his consent a protest.

Dredge seemed to notice nothing beyond the fact that his visitors were seated. He reached for his pipe, and filled it with the care which the habit of delicate manipulations gave to all the motions of his long, knotty hands.

“It’s about the lectures?” he said.

Archie’s answer was a deep scornful breath.

“You’ve only been back a week, so you’ve only heard one, I suppose?”

“It was not necessary to hear even that one. You must know the talk they’re making. If notoriety is what you’re after — ”

“Well, I’m not sorry to make a noise,” said Dredge, putting a match to his pipe.

Archie bounded in his chair. “There’s no easier way of doing it than to attack a man who can’t answer you!”

Dredge raised a sobering hand. “Hold on. Perhaps you and I don’t mean the same thing. Tell me first what’s in your mind.”

The request steadied Archie, who turned on Dredge a countenance really eloquent with filial indignation.

“It’s an odd question for you to ask; it makes me wonder what’s in yours. Not much thought of my father, at any rate, or you couldn’t stand in his place and use the chance he’s given you to push yourself at his expense.”

Dredge received this in silence, puffing slowly at his pipe.

“Is that the way it strikes you?” he asked at length.

“God! It’s the way it would strike most men.”

He turned to me. “You too?”

“I can see how Archie feels,” I said.

“That I’m attacking his father’s memory to glorify myself?”

“Well, not precisely: I think what he really feels is that, if your convictions didn’t permit you to continue his father’s teaching, you might perhaps have done better to sever your connection with the Lanfear lectureship.”

“Then you and he regard the Lanfear lectureship as having been founded to perpetuate a dogma, not to try and get at the truth?”

“Certainly not,” Archie broke in. “But there’s a question of taste, of delicacy, involved in the case that can’t be decided on abstract principles. We know as well as you that my father meant the laboratory and the lectureship to serve the ends of science, at whatever ............