“Oh, yes—­I had time,” Dredge conceded.

“And yet you kept the chair and went on with the course?”

Dredge refilled his pipe, and then turned in his seat so that he looked squarely at Archie.

“What would your father have done in my place?” he asked.

“In your place—?”

“Yes:  supposing he’d found out the things I’ve found out in the last year or two.  You’ll see what they are, and how much they count, if you’ll run over the report of the lectures.  If your father’d been alive he might have come across the same facts just as easily.”

There was a silence which Archie at last broke by saying:  “But he didn’t, and you did.  There’s the difference.”

“The difference?  What difference?  Would your father have suppressed the facts if he’d found them?  It’s you who insult his memory by implying it!  And if I’d brought them to him, would he have used his hold over me to get me to suppress them?”

“Certainly not.  But can’t you see it’s his death that makes the difference?  He’s not here to defend his case.”

Dredge laughed, but not unkindly.  “My dear Archie, your father wasn’t one of the kind who bother to defend their case.  Men like him are the masters, not the servants, of their theories.  They respect an idea only as long as it’s of use to them; when it’s usefulness ends they chuck it out.  And that’s what your father would have done.”

Archie reddened.  “Don’t you assume a good deal in taking it for granted that he would have had to in this particular case?”

Dredge reflected.  Yes:  I was going too far.  Each of us can only answer for himself.  But to my mind your father’s theory is refuted.”

“And you don’t hesitate to be the man to do it?”

“Should I have been of any use if I had?  And did your father ever ask anything of me but to be of as much use as I could?”

It was Archie’s turn to reflect.  “No.  That was what he always wanted, of course.”

“That’s the way I’ve always felt.  The first day he took me away from East Lethe I knew the debt I was piling up against him, and I never had any doubt as to how I’d pay it, or how he’d want it paid.  He didn’t pick me out and train me for any object but to carry on the light.  Do you suppose he’d have wanted me to snuff it out because it happened to light up a fact he didn’t fancy?  I’m using his oil to feed my torch with:  yes, but it isn’t really his torch or mine, or his oil or mine:  they belong to each of us till we drop and hand them on.”

Archie turned a sobered glance on him.  “I see your point.  But if the job had to be done I don’t see that you need have done it from his chair.”