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The superiority of his sad smile was beginning to get on my nerves. I wanted him to see that he was as absurd as I.

“Suppose,” I said–“suppose, for the sake of argument, that you and I are nothing but helpless automata created to do just this and that, and to have just that and this done to us. Suppose, in fact, we HAVEN’T any free will whatsoever. Is it likely or conceivable that the Power which fashioned us would take the trouble to jot down in cipher on our hands just what was in store for us?”

Laider did not answer this question; he did but annoyingly ask me another.

“You believe in free will?”

“Yes, of course. I’ll be hanged if I’m an automaton.”

“And you believe in free will just as in palmistry–without 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.