III
Carrying the three watercolours of my choice under my arm, I emergedfrom Forty- nine Ellesmere Square and immediately cannoned¹ intosomeone coming up the steps to the front door. I apologised, received apo-logies in return, and was just about to hail a passing taxi when somethingclicked in my mind and I turned sharply to ask:
“Hallo—isn’t it Corrigan?”
“It is—and—yes—you’re Mark Easterbrook!”
Jim Corrigan and I had been friends in our Oxford² days—but it musthave been fifteen years or more since we had last met.
“Thought I knew you—but couldn’t place you for the moment,” said Cor-rigan. “I read your articles now and again—and enjoy them, I must say.”
“What about you? Have you gone in for research as you meant to do?”
Corrigan sighed.
“Hardly. It’s an expensive job—if you want to strike out on your own.
Unless you can find a tame millionaire, or a suggestible Trust.”
“Liver flukes, wasn’t it?”
“What a memory! No, I went off liver flukes. The properties of the secre-tions of the Mandarian glands³; that’s my present- day interest. Youwouldn’t have heard of them! Connected with the spleen. Apparentlyserving no purpose whatever!”
He spoke⁵ with a scientist’s enthusiasm.
“What’s the big idea, then?”
“Well,” Corrigan sounded apologetic. “I have a theory that they may in-fluence behaviour. To put it very crudely, they may act rather as the fluidin your car brakes does. No fluid—the brakes don’t act. In human beings,a deficiency in these secretions⁶ might— I only say might—make you acriminal.”
I whistled.
“And what happens to Original Sin?”
“What indeed?” said Dr. Corrigan. “The parsons wouldn’t like it, wouldthey? I haven’t been able to interest anyone in my theory, unfortunately.
So I’m a police surgeon, in N.W. division. Quite interesting. One sees a lotof criminal types. But I won’t bore you with shop—unless you’ll come andhave some lunch with me?”

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