THE UTTERMOST FARTHING




I

THE MOTIVE FORCE


It is not without some misgivings that I at length make public the
strange history communicated to me by my lamented friend Humphrey
Challoner. The outlook of the narrator is so evidently abnormal, his
ethical standards are so remote from those ordinarily current, that the
chronicle of his life and actions may not only fail to secure the
sympathy of the reader but may even excite a certain amount of moral
repulsion. But by those who knew him, his generosity to the poor, and
especially to those who struggled against undeserved misfortune, will be
an ample set-off to his severity and even ferocity towards the enemies
of society.

Humphrey Challoner was a great savant spoiled by untimely wealth. When I
knew him he had lapsed into a mere dilettante; at least, so I thought
at the time, though subsequent revelations showed him in a rather
different light. He had some reputation as a criminal anthropologist and
had formerly been well known as a comparative anatomist, but when I made
his acquaintance he seemed to be occupied chiefly in making endless
additions to the specimens in his private museum. This collection I
could never quite understand. It consisted chiefly of human and other
mammalian skeletons, all of which presented certain small deviations