Here was a casuistical proposition thrown at my head by the last person I should have suspected of doing so.  It was immensely interesting, in view of my long puzzledom.  I spoke warily.

“That depends on the man—­on the nice balance of his dual nature.  On the one side is the power to demand mercilessly; on the other, the instinct to respond.  Of course, the criminal—­”

“What are you dragging in criminals for?” he said sharply.  “I’m talking about honourable men with consciences.  Criminals haven’t consciences.  The devil who has just been hung for murdering three women in their baths hadn’t any dual nature, as you call it.  Those murders didn’t represent to him a mountain of debt to God which his soul was summoned to discharge.  He went to his death thinking himself a most unlucky and hardly used fellow.”

His fingers went instinctively into the cigarette-box.  I passed him the matches.

“Precisely,” said I.  “That was the point I was about to make.”

He puffed at his cigarette and looked rather foolish, as though regretting his outburst.

“We’ve got away,” he said, after a pause, “from what I was meaning to tell you.  And I want to tell you because I mayn’t have another chance.”  He turned to the window-seat and picked up his life-preserver.  “I’m out for two things.  One is to kill Germans—­” He patted the covered knob—­and there flashed across my mind a boyhood’s memory of Martin—­wasn’t it Martin?—­in “Hereward the Wake,” who had a deliciously blood-curdling habit of patting his revengeful axe.—­“I’ve done in eighty-five with this and my revolver.  That, I consider, is my duty to my country.  The other is to get the V.C.  That’s for payment to my creditor self.”

“In full, or on account?” said I.

“There’s only one payment in full,” he answered grimly, “and that I’ve been offering for the past twelve months.  And it’s a thousand chances to one it will be accepted before the end of this year.  And that, after all this palaver, is what I’ve just made up my mind to talk to you about.”

“You mean your death?”

“Just that,” said he.  “A man pot-hunting for Victoria Crosses takes a thousand to one chance.”  He paused abruptly and shot an eager and curiously wavering glance at me.  “Am I boring you with all this?”

“Good Heavens, no.”  And then as the insistence of his great figure towering over me had begun to fret my nerves—­“Sit down, man,” said I, with an impatient gesture, “and put that sickening toy away and come to the point.”

He tossed the cane on the window-seat and sat near me on a straight-backed chair.