A.V. Laider | Page 7

any reason?"
"Oh, no. Everything points to our having free will."
"Everything? What, for instance?"
This rather cornered me. I dodged out, as lightly as I could, by saying:

"I suppose YOU would say it's written in my hand that I should be a
believer in free will."
"Ah, I've no doubt it is."
I held out my palms. But, to my great disappointment, he looked
quickly away from them. He had ceased to smile. There was agitation
in his voice as he explained that he never looked at people's hands now.
"Never now--never again." He shook his head as though to beat off
some memory.
I was much embarrassed by my indiscretion. I hastened to tide over the
awkward moment by saying that if I could read hands I wouldn't, for
fear of the awful things I might see there.
"Awful things, yes," he whispered, nodding at the fire.
"Not," I said in self-defense, "that there's anything very awful, so far as
I know, to be read in MY hands."
He turned his gaze from the fire to me.
"You aren't a murderer, for example?"
"Oh, no," I replied, with a nervous laugh.
"I am."
This was a more than awkward, it was a painful, moment for me; and I
am afraid I must have started or winced, for he instantly begged my
pardon.
"I don't know," he exclaimed, "why I said it. I'm usually a very reticent
man. But sometimes--" He pressed his brow. "What you must think of
me!"
I begged him to dismiss the matter from his mind.
"It's very good of you to say that; but--I've placed myself as well as you

in a false position. I ask you to believe that I'm not the sort of man who
is 'wanted' or ever was 'wanted' by the police. I should be bowed out of
any police-station at which I gave myself up. I'm not a murderer in any
bald sense of the word. No."
My face must have perceptibly brightened, for, "Ah," he said, "don't
imagine I'm not a murderer at all. Morally, I am." He looked at the
clock. I pointed out that the night was young. He assured me that his
story was not a long one. I assured him that I hoped it was. He said I
was very kind. I denied this. He warned me that what he had to tell
might rather tend to stiffen my unwilling faith in palmistry, and to
shake my opposite and cherished faith in free will. I said, "Never
mind." He stretched his hands pensively toward the fire. I settled
myself back in my chair.
"My hands," he said, staring at the backs of them, "are the hands of a
very weak man. I dare say you know enough of palmistry to see that for
yourself. You notice the slightness of the thumbs and of he two 'little'
fingers. They are the hands of a weak and over-sensitive man--a man
without confidence, a man who would certainly waver in an emergency.
Rather Hamletish hands," he mused. "And I'm like Hamlet in other
respects, too: I'm no fool, and I've rather a noble disposition, and I'm
unlucky. But Hamlet was luckier than I in one thing: he was a murderer
by accident, whereas the murders that I committed one day fourteen
years ago--for I must tell you it wasn't one murder, but many murders
that I committed--were all of them due to the wretched inherent
weakness of my own wretched self.
"I was twenty-six--no, twenty-seven years old, and rather a nondescript
person, as I am now. I was supposed to have been called to the bar. In
fact, I believe I HAD been called to the bar. I hadn't listened to the call.
I never intended to practise, and I never did practise. I only wanted an
excuse in the eyes of the world for existing. I suppose the nearest I have
ever come to practicing is now at this moment: I am defending a
murderer. My father had left me well enough provided with money. I
was able to go my own desultory way, riding my hobbies where I
would. I had a good stableful of hobbies. Palmistry was one of them. I

was rather ashamed of this one. It seemed to me absurd, as it seems to
you. Like you, though, I believed in it. Unlike you, I had done more
than merely read a book about it. I had read innumerable books about it.
I had taken casts of all my friends' hands. I had tested and tested again
the points at which Desbarolles dissented from the Gipsies, and--well,
enough that I had gone into it all rather thoroughly, and was as sound a
palmist, as a man may be without giving his whole life to