No scholar can pretend to absolute completeness, but every scholarly work must be as nearly complete as possible; any omission of available data because of carelessness, inadequate research, or (most damning of all) personal motives—such as the support of a theory which the data might contradict—is the blackest sin against scholarship itself…
Such were my thoughts as I sat working on my definitive Murderous Tendencies in the Abnormally Gifted: a study of the homicides committed by artists and scholars. The date was October 21, 1951. The place was my office in Wortley Hall, on the campus of the University.
My conclusions seemed unassailable: Murder had been committed by eminent scholars (one need only allude to Professor Webster of Harvard) and by admirable artists (François Villon leaps first to the mind). But in no case had the motivation been connected with the abnormal gift; my study of the relationship between homicidal tendencies and unusual endowments established, in the best scholarly tradition, that no such relationship existed.
It was then that Stuart Danvers entered my office. “Professor Jordan?” he asked. His speech was slurred, and he swayed slightly. “I read your piece in the Atlantic on Villon (it sounded like villain) and I said to myself, ‘There’s the guy to help you.’”
And before I could speak, he had placed a large typewritten manuscript on my desk. “Understand,” he went on, “I’m no novice at this. I’m a pro. I’ve sold fact-crime pieces to all the top editors.” He hiccuped. “Only now it strikes me it’s time for a little hardcover prestige.”
I stared at the title page, which read Genius in Gore, and then began flipping through the book. The theme was my own. The style was lurid, the documentation inadequate. He had taken seriously the pretensions to learning of such frauds as Aram and Rulloff; he had omitted such a key figure as the composer Gesualdo da Venosa. But I had read enough in the field to know that his abominable work was what is called “commercial.” He would have no trouble in finding a publisher immediately; and my own book was scheduled by the University Press for, at best, “sometime” in 1953.
“Little nip?” he suggested, and as I shook my head he drank from his flask. “Like it? Thought maybe you could help—well, sort of goose it with a couple of footnotes…you know.”
I looked at this drunken, unscholarly lout. I saw myself eclipsed in his shadow, the merest epigone to his attack upon my chosen Thebes. And then he said, “Of course that’s just a rough first draft, you understand.”
“Do you keep a carbon of first drafts?” I asked idly. And when he shook his addled skull, I split that skull’s forehead with my heavy paperweight. He stumbled back against the wall, lurched forward, and then collapsed. His head struck the desk.
I tucked the obscene manuscript away, wrapped the paperweight in a handkerchief, carried it down the hall, washed it, flushed the handkerchief down the toilet, returned to my room, and called the police. A stranger had wandered into my office drunk, stumbled, and cracked his head against my desk.
The crime, if such it can be considered, was as nearly perfect as any of which I have knowledge. It is also unique in being the only instance of a crime committed by an eminent scholar which was motivated by his scholarship…
AUTHOR’S POSTSCRIPT: What really brought the story on was that Ellery Queen said he’d like to see some short-short-shorts. I thought it was an interesting technical challenge. The book in question in the story—that is, the matter of the relation between murder and other talents—is a problem that has long fascinated me. When I thought of using it as a theme, the plot seemed to follow immediately out of it.