“Because he hated Arnell like poison. Absolutely loathed the sight of him, and didn’t make any attempt to hide the fact, either.”

“What was the reason for this hate of his?”

“Just professional jealousy, I think.” Baker smiled. “Some years ago Dr. Crocker produced some patent theory of his own about the authorship of Shakespeare’s plays. You know, some cryptogram or cipher idea, like the Baconians produce so proudly. Something completely crazy, and yet logical in a silly sort of way, if you understand.”

“I understand,” said Cunningham, who had so far been fortunate enough not to meet with this particular brand of literary lunacy.

“Well,” Baker went on, “Arnell read the book which the Oxford johnnie produced, and reviewed it for some learned journal or other. Previous to that they had been very good friends, but now he simply chewed up Crocker’s theory, so that the man absolutely hadn’t a leg to stand on. And Crocker wrote nasty letters to all the literary papers—letters which they usually refused to publish—pointing out what an utter old fool Arnell was. After that little episode, of course, their friendship just faded away and died.”

“When did this happen, sir?” asked Cunningham. “Have you got any idea of the dates?”

“It would be some time last summer, I should think,” was the reply. “July or August, or thereabouts. At any rate, if you say about twelve months ago, you wouldn’t be far out.”

“And did this enmity go on, sir?”

“Oh, yes. In fact, it showed every sign of getting worse. And Arnell was working on a book of Shakespearian criticism, in which he proposed, I believe, to destroy every Shakespearian critic of past and present, from Sir Edward Durning-Lawrence and J. M. Robertson, down to G. B. Harrison and Dr. Crocker. Not that Crocker was really a Shakespearian critic. Marlowe and Greene and all those lesser Elizabethans were really his province, just as they were Arnell’s.”

“But I understood from Miss Arnell that Dr. Crocker was a friend of the professor,” Cunningham objected.

“Oh, did she say that?” Baker smiled once more. “Arnell was one of the real old-fashioned brigade where women were concerned. I expect that accounts for her not knowing about this quarrel. He held that a woman’s job was in the home, looking after man’s worldly needs, and taking care of the children, if the good God saw fit to give her any. He always said that a man’s job was his own affair, and that a woman shouldn’t expect to share his interests. So I suppose, although he talked to me endlessly about the iniquities of the scholar from Oxford, that he never bothered to mention the subject to her at all.”

“H’m.” Cunningham didn’t think that this sounded at all convincing, though he was well aware that, even in this modern world of ours, there were still people who held such old-fashioned views.