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The Mathematical Experience Study Edition Philip J.
Davis Digital Instant Download
Author(s): Philip J. Davis, Reuben Hersh, Elena Anne Marchisotto (auth.)
ISBN(s): 9780817682941, 0817682945
Edition: 1
File Details: PDF, 101.13 MB
Year: 2012
Language: english
Modern Birkhäuser Classics

Many of the original research and survey monographs, as well

as textbooks, in pure and applied mathematics published by
Birkhäuser in recent decades have been groundbreaking and
have come to be regarded as foundational to the subject. Through
the MBC Series, a select number of these modern classics, entirely
uncorrected, are being re-released in paperback (and as eBooks)
to ensure that these treasures remain accessible to new genera-
tions of students, scholars, and researchers.
The Mathematical
Experience,
Study Edition

Philip J. Davis
Reuben Hersh
Elena Anne Marchisotto

Reprint of the 1995 Edition

Philip J. Davis Reuben Hersh
Division of Applied Mathematics Department of Mathematics
Brown University and Statistics
Providence, RI 02912 University of New Mexico
USA Albuquerque, NM 87131
[email protected] USA
[email protected]

Elena Anne Marchisotto

Department of Mathematics
California State University, Northridge
Northridge, CA 91330
[email protected]

Originally published as a hardcover edition under the same title by Birkhäuser Boston,
ISBN 978-0-8176-3739-2, ©1995

ISBN 978-0-8176-8294-1 e-ISBN 978-0-8176-8295-8

DOI 10.1007/978-0-8176-8295-8
Springer New York Dordrecht Heidelberg London

Library of Congress Control Number: 2 011939204

© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2012

All rights reserved. This work may not be translated or copied in whole or in part without
the written permission of the publisher (Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, 233 Spring
Street, New York, NY 10013, USA), except for brief excerpts in connection with reviews or
scholarly analysis. Use in connection with any form of information storage and retrieval,
electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now
known or hereafter developed is forbidden.
The use in this publication of trade names, trademarks, service marks, and similar terms,
even if they are not identified as such, is not to be taken as an expression of opinion as to
whether or not they are subject to proprietary rights.

Printed on acid-free paper

www.birkhauser-science.com
Philip J. Davis
Reuben Hersh
Elena Anne Marchisotto
With an Introduction by Gian-Carlo Rota

The
Mathematical
Experience
Study Edition

Birkhauser
Boston • Basel • Berlin
Philip J. Davis Reuben Hersh
Division of Applied Mathematics Department of Mathematics
Brown University and Statistics
Providence, RI 02912 University of New Mexico
Albuquerque, NM 87131
Elena Anne Marchisotto
Department of Mathematics
California State University, Northridge
Northridge, CA 913308313

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Davis, Philip J., 1923-

The mathematical experience I Philip J. Davis, Reuben Hersh, Elena
Anne Marchisotto : with an introduction by Gian-Carlo Rota. -- Study ed.
p. em.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8176-3739-7 (h : acid-free).-- ISBN 3-7643-3739-7 (h
acid-free)
I. Mathematics--Philosophy. 2. Mathematics--History.
3. Mathematics--Study and teaching. I. Hersh, Reuben, 1927-
11. Marchisotto, Elena. III. Title.
QA8.4.D37 1995 95-20875
51 O--dc20 CIP

Printed on acid-free paper

© 1981 , First Edition, Birkhiiuser Birkhiiuser }J ®
Published 1995. Study Edition Birkhiiuser

Copyright is not claimed for works of U.S. Government employees.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording,
or otherwise, without prior permission of the copyright owner.
Permission to photocopy for internal or personal use of specific clients is granted by
Birkhiiuser Boston for libraries and other users registered with the Copyright Clearance
Center (CCC), provided that the base fee of$6.00 per copy, plus $0.20 per page is paid directly
to CCC, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, U.S.A. Special requests should be
addressed directly to Birkhiiuser Boston, 675 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02139,
U.S.A.
ISBN 0-8176-3739-7
ISBN 3-7643-3739-7
First edition was designed by Mike Fender, Cambridge, MA
and set in Baskerville and I.T.C.
Caslon Light 223 by Progressive Typographers, York, PA
Text for Study Edition was typeset by Martin Stock, Cambridge, MA
Printed and bound by Quinn-Woodbine, Woodbine, NJ
Printed in the U.S.A.
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
 For my parents,
Mildred and Philip Hersh

****
For my brother,
Hyman R. Davis
Contents

Preface Xlll
Preface to the Study Edition XV
Acknowledgements xvii
Introduction XXI

Overture 1
I. The Mathematical Landscape
What is Math e m atics? 6
Where is Mathematics 8
The Mathematical Community 9
The Tools of the Trade 13
How Much Mathematics is Now Known? 17
Ulam's Dilemma 20
How Much Mathematics Can There Be? 24
Appendix A-Brief Chronological Table to 1910 26
Appendix B-The Classification of Mathematics
1868 and 1979 Compared 29
Assignments and Problem Sets 31
2. Varieties of Mathematical Experience
The Current Individual and Collective
Consciousness 36
The Ideal Mathematician 38
A Physicist Looks at Mathematics 48
I. R. Shafarevitch and the New Neoplatonism 56
Unorthodoxies 59
The Individual and the Culture 64
Assignments and Problem Sets 70
3. Outer Issues
Why Mathematics Works:
A Conventionalist Answer 76
Mathematical Models 85

lX
Contents

Utility 87
1. Varieties of Mathematical Uses 87
2. On the Utility of Mathematics to Mathematics 88
3. On the Utility of Mathematics to
Other Scientific or Technological Fields 91
4. Pure vs. Applied Mathematics 93
5. From Haryism to Mathematical Maoism 95
Underneath the Fig Leaf 97
I. Mathematics in the Marketplace 97
2. Mathematics and War 101
3. Number Mysticism 104
4. Hermetic Geometry 108
5. Astrology 109
6. Religion 116
Abstraction and Scholastic Theology 121
Assignments and Problem Sets 128
4. Inner Issues
Symbols 138
Abstraction 142
Generalization 150
Formalization 152
Mathematical Objects and Structure; Existence 156
Proof 163
Infinity, or the Miraculous Jar of Mathematics 168
The Stretched String 174
The Coin of Tyche 179
The Aesthetic Component 184
Pattern, Order, and Chaos 188
Algorithmic vs. Dialectic Mathematics 196
The Drive to Generality and Abstraction
The Chinese Remainder Theorem: A Case Study 203
Mathematics as Enigma 212
Unity within Diversity 214
Assignments and Problem Sets 217
5. Selected Topics in Mathematics
Group Theory and the Classification
of Finite Simple Groups 227
The Prime Number Theorem 233
Non-Euclidean Geometry 241

X
 Contents

Non-Cantorian Set Theory 247

Appendix A 261
Nonstandard Analysis 261
Fourier Analysis 279
Assignments and Problem Sets 295
6. Teaching and Learning
Confessions of a Prep School Math Teacher 304
The Classic Classroom Crisis of
Understanding and Pedagogy 306
P6lya's Craft of Discovery 317
The Creation of New Mathematics:
An Application of the Lakatos Heuristic 323
Comparative Aesthetics 330
Nonanalytic Aspects of Mathematics 333
Assignments and Problem Sets 349
7. From Certainty to Fallibility
Platonism, Formalism, Constructivism 356
The Philosophical Plight of the
Working Mathematician 359
The Euclid Myth 360
Foundations, Found and Lost 368
The Formalist Philosophy of Mathematics 377
Lakatos and the Philosophy of Dubitability 383
Assignments and Problems Sets 398
8. Mathematical Reality
The Riemann Hypothesis 405
1r and -IT 411
Mathematical Models, Computers, and
Platonism 417
Why Should I Believe a Computer? 422
Classification of Finite Simple Groups 429
Intuition 433
Four-Dimensional Intuition 442
True Facts About Imaginary Objects 448
Assignments and Problem Sets 454
Glossary 458
Bibliography 463
Index 481
Epilogues 489

Xl
Preface

T HE OLDEST MATHEMATICAL tablets we

have date from 2400 B.c., but there is no reason
to suppose that the urge to create and use mathe-
matics is not coextensive with the whole of civili-
zation. In tour or five millennia a vast body of practices and
concepts known as mathematics has emerged and has been
linked in a variety of ways with our day-to-day life. What
is the nature of mathematics? What is its meaning? What
are its concerns? What is its methodology? How is it
created? How is it used? How does it fit in with the varieties
of human experience? What benefits flow from it? What
harm? What importance can be ascribed to it?
These difficult questions are not made easier by the fact
that the amount of material is so large and the amount of
interlinking is so extensive that it is simply not possible for
any one person to comprehend it all, let alone sum it up
and compress the summary between the covers of an aver-
age-sized book. Lest we be cowed by this vast amount of
material, let us think of mathematics in another way. Math-
ematics has been a human activity for thousands of years.
To some small extent, everybody is a mathematician and
does mathematics consciously. To buy at the market, to
measure a strip of wall paper or to decorate a ceramic pot
with a regular pattern is doing mathematics. Further,
everybody is to some small extent a philosopher of mathe-
matics. Let him only exclaim on occasion: "But figures
can't lie!" and he joins the ranks of Plato and of Lakatos.
In addition to the vast population that uses mathematics
on a modest scale, there are a small number of people who
are professional mathematicians. They practice mathemat-

Xlll
Preface

ics, foster it, teach it, create it, and use it in a wide variety of
situations. It should be possible to explain to nonprofes-
sionals just what these people ar~ doing, what they say they
are doing, and why the rest of the world should support
them at it. This, in brief, is the task we have set for our-
selves. The book is not intended to present a systematic,
self-contained discussion of a specific corpus of mathemati-
cal material, either recent or classical. It is intended rather
to capture the inexhaustible variety presented by the math-
ematical experience. The major strands of our exposition
will be the substance of mathematics, its history, its philoso-
phy, and how mathematical knowledge is elicited. The
book should be regarded not as a compression but rather
as an impression. It is not a mathematics book; it is a book
about mathematics. Inevitably it must contain some mathe-
matics. Similarly, it is not a history or a philosophy book,
but it will discuss mathematical history and philosophy. It
follows that the reader must bring to it some slight p1ior
knowledge of these things and a seed of interest to plant
and water. The general reader with this background
should have no difficulty in getting through the major por-
tion of the book. But there are a number of places where
we have brought in specialized material and directed our
exposition to the professional who uses or produces math-
ematics. Here the reader may feel like a guest who has
been invited to a family dinner. After polite general con-
versation. the family turns to narrow family concerns, its
delights and its worries, and the guest is left up in the air,
but fascinated. At such places the reader should judiciously
and lightheartedly push on.
For the most part, the essays in this book can be read in-
dependently of each other.
Some comment is necessary about the use of the word
"I" in a book written by two people. In some instances it
will be obvious which of the authors wrote the "I." In any
case, mistaken identity can lead to no great damage, for
each author agrees, in a general way, with the opinions of
his colleague.

XIV
Preface to the
Study Edition
The first Mathematical Experience appeared in 1981. At that
time, only a few years ago, it was commonly believed that it was
impossible to make contemporary mathematics meaningful
to the intelligent non-mathematician. Since then, dozens of
popular books on contemporary mathematics have been pub-
lished. James Gleick's Chaos was a long-run best seller. John
Casti is producing a continuing series of such books.
In technology and invention, it's a commonplace that know-
ing what's possible is the most important ingredient of suc-
cessful innovation. Perhaps the first Mathematical Experience
changed people's idea about what's possible in exposition of
advanced contemporary mathematics.
Alert readers recognized the book as a work of philosophy
-a humanist philosophy of mathematics. It was far out, ''mav-
erick" (see Philip Kitcher), virtually out of contact with offi-
cial academic philosophy of mathematics. In the past 15 years,
humanist philosophy of mathematics has bloomed. There are
anthologies, symposia, a journal. The far-out maverick of 15
years ago might be the mainstream in a few years.
The first Mathematical Experience was a trade book, not a text-
book. It was sold in book stores, not in professor's offices. But
we heard over and over of college teachers using it, in the
United States, Europe, Australia, Hong Kong, Israel. It's used
in two different ways: "Math for liberal arts students" in col-
leges of art and science, and courses for future teachers, es-
pecially secondary math teachers, in colleges of education.
In mathematics teaching, it's a commonplace that "Mathe-
matics isn't a spectator sport." You learn by doing, especially
doing problems. Like all truisms, this is half true. Mathemat-
ics education as doing, doing, doing-no thinking, no con-
versation, no contemplation-can seem dreary. An artist isn't
prohibited from occasional art appreciation-quite the con-
trary. You can'tlearn practical skill as a spectator, but you can
learn good taste, among other things.

XV
Preface

The first edition invited the reader to appreciate mathe-

matics, contemplate it, participate in a conversation about
it. It contained no problems. If a teacher selected it, he/she
had to supply what the book lacked. The study edition will be
more convenient for both teacher and student. It aims for bal-
ance between doing and thinking. There are plenty of prob-
lems, mostly created by Professor Elena Anne Marchisotto,
who also supplies generous discussion guides, essay topics,
and bibliographies. We've also introduced "projects": con-
nected sequences of problems, rising in difficulty from very
easy to a little less easy. They provide extra problem-solving
enjoyment, and they make points about the nature of math-
ematics. We've written a section on differential and integral
calculus-a complete course in 15 pages-and a section on
the fascinating topic of complex numbers-fascinating from
both mathematical and philosophic viewpoints.
The Standards of the National Council ofTeachers of Math-
ematics appeared after the first Mathematical Experience. To a
large extent, they validated our enterprise. We were following
the Standards before they were written. The study edition does
so even more than the first.
No longer are "critical thinking" and "problem solving"
just features of mathematics. They've become catchwords in
American classrooms. The study edition of The Mathematical
Experience is a part of the dominant trend in American educa-
tion.

xvi
Acknowledgements

S OME OF THE MATERIAL of this book was ex-

cerpted from published articles. Several of these
have joint authorship: "Non-Cantorian Set The-
ory" by Paul Cohen and Reuben Hersh and "Non-
Standard Analysis" by Martin Davis and Reuben Hersh
both appeared in the Scientific American. "Nonanalytic As-
pects of Mathematics" by Philip J. Davis and James A. An-
derson appeared in the SIAM Review. To Professors An-
derson, Cohen, and M. Davis and to these publishers, we
extend our grateful acknowledgement for permission to
include their work here.
Individual articles by the authors excerpted here include
"Number," "Numerical Analysis," and "Mathematics by
Fiat?" by Philip J. Davis which appeared in the Scientific
American, "The Mathematical Sciences," M.I.T. Press, and
the Two Year College Mathematical journal respectively;
"Some Proposals for Reviving the Philosophy of Mathe-
matics" and "Introducing Imre Lakatos" by Reuben
Hersh, which appeared in Advances in Mathematics and the
Mathematical Intelligencer, respectively.
We appreciate the courtesy of the following organiza-
tions and individuals who allowed us to reproduce material
in this book: The Academy of Sciences at Gottingen,
Ambix, Dover Publishers, Mathematics of Computation,
M.I.T. Press, New Yorker Magazine, Professor A. H. Schoen-
feld, and John Wiley and Sons.
The section on Fourier analysis was written by Reuben
Hersh and Phyllis Hersh. In critical discussions of philo-
sophical questions, in patient and careful editing of rough
drafts, and in her unfailing moral support of this

XVII
Acknowledgements

project, Phyllis Hersh made essential contributions which it

is a pleasure to acknowledge.
The following individuals and institutions generously al-
lowed us to reproduce graphic and artistic material: Pro-
fessors Thomas Banchoff and Charles Strauss, th~ Brown
University Library, the Museum of Modern Art, The
Lummus Company, Professor Ron Resch, Routledge and
Kegan Paul, Professor A. J. Sachs, the University of Chi-
cago Press, the Whitworth Art Gallery, the University of
Manchester, the University of Utah, Department of Com-
puter Science, the Yale University Press.
We wish to thank Professors Peter Lax and Gian-Carlo
Rota for encouragement and suggestions. Professor Ga-
briel Stoltzenberg engaged us in a lively and productive
correspondence on some of the issues discussed here. Pro-
fessor Lawrence D. Kugler read the manuscript and made
many valuable criticisms. Professor Jose Luis Abreu's par-
ticipation in a Seminar on the Philosophy of Mathematics
at the University of New Mexico is greatly appreciated.
The participants in the Seminar on Philosophical Issues
in Mathematics, held at Brown University, as well as the
students in courses given at the University of New Mexico
and at Brown, helped us crystallize our views and this help
is gratefully acknowledged. The assistance of Professor
Igor Najfeld was particularly welcome.
We should like to express our appreciation to our col-
leagues in the History of Mathematics Department at
Brown University. In the course of many years of shared
lunches, Professors David Pingree, Otto Neugebauer, A. J.
Sachs, and Gerald Toomer supplied us with the "three I's":
information, insight, and inspiration. Thanks go to Profes-
sor Din-Yu Hsieh for information about the history of Chi-
nese mathematics.
Special thanks to Eleanor Addison for many line draw-
ings. We are grateful to Edith Lazear for her careful and
critical reading of Chapters 7 and 8 and her editorial com-
ments.
We wish to thank Katrina Avery, Frances Beagan, Jo-
seph M. Davis, Ezoura Fonseca, and Frances Gajdowski for

xviii
their efficient help in the preparation and handling of the
manuscript. Ms. Avery also helped us with a number of
classical references. We would like to thank Professor Julian
Gevirtz for a careful reading of the first printing which
helped us find a number of misprints and errors.
P. J. DAVIS
R. HERSH

xix
Introduction
DEDICATED TO MARK KAC
"oh philosophie alimentaire!"
-Sartre

A HE TURN OF THE CENTURY, the Swiss his-

torian Jakob Burckhardt, who, unlike most
historians, was fond of guessing the future, once
confided to his friend Friedrich Nietzsche the
prediction that the Twentieth Century would be "the age
of oversimplification".
Burckhardt's prediction has proved frighteningly accu-
rate. Dictators and demagogues of all colors have captured
the trust of the masses by promising a life of bread and
bliss, to come right after the war to end all wars. Philoso-
phers have proposed daring reductions of the complexity
of existence to the mechanics of elastic billiard balls;
others, more sophisticated, have held that life is language,
and that language is in turn nothing but strings of marble-
like units held together by the catchy connectives of Fre-
gean logic. Artists who dished out in all seriousness check-
erboard patterns in red, white, and blue are now fetching
the highest bids at Sotheby's. The use of such words as
"mechanically" "automatically" and "immediately" is now
accepted by the wizards of Madison Avenue as the first law
of advertising.
Not even the best minds of Science have been immune to
the lure of oversimplification. Physics has been driven by
the search for one, only one law which one day, just
around the corner, will unify all forces: gravitation and

XXI
Introduction

electricity and strong and weak interactions and what not.

Biologists are now mesmerized by the prospect that the se-
cret of life may be gleaned from a double helix dotted with
large molecules. Psychologists have prescribed in turn sex-
ual release, wonder drugs and primal screams as the cure
for common depression, while preachers would counter
with the less expensive offer to join the hosannahing cho-
rus of the born-again.
It goes to the credit of mathematicians to have been the
slowest to join this movement. Mathematics, like theology
and all free creations of the Mind, obeys the inexorable
laws of the imaginary, and the Pollyannas of the day are of
little help in establishing the truth of a conjecture. One
may pay lip service to Descartes and Grothendieck when
they wish that geometry be reduced to algebra, or toRus-
sell and Gentzen when they command that mathematics
become logic, but we know that some mathematicians are
more endowed with the talent of drawing pictures, others
with that of juggling symbols and yet others with the ability
of picking the flaw in an argument.
Nonetheless, some mathematicians have given in to the
simplistics of our day when it comes to the understanding
of the nature of their activity and of the standing of mathe-
matics in the world at large. With good reason, nobody
likes to be told what he is really doing or to have his inti-
mate working habits analyzed and written up. What might
Senator Proxmire say if he were to set his eyes upon such
an account? It might be more rewarding to slip into the
Senator's hands the textbook for Philosophy of Science
301, where the author, an ambitious young member of the
Philosophy Department, depicts with impeccable clarity
the ideal mathematician ideally working in an ideal world.
We often hear that mathematics consists mainly in
"proving theorems". Is a writer's job mainly that of
"writing sentences"? A mathematician's work is mostly a
tangle of guesswork, analogy, wishful thinking and frustra-
tion, and proof, far from being the core of discovery, is
more often than not a way of making sure that our minds
are not playing tricks. Few people, if any, had dared write
this out loud before Davis and Hersh. Theorems are not to

xxii
 Introduction

mathematics what successful courses are to a meal. The nu-

tritional analogy is misleading. To master mathematics is to
master an intangible view, it is to acquire the skill of the vir-
tuoso who cannot pin his performance on criteria. The
theorems of geometry are not related to the field of Geom-
etry as elements are to a set. The relationship is more sub-
tle, and Davis and Hersh give a rare honest description of
this relationship.
After Davis and Hersh, it will be hard to uphold the Glas-
perlenspiel view of mathematics. The mystery of mathemat-
ics, in the authors' amply documented account, is that con-
clusions originating in the play of the mind do find striking
practical 2pplications. Davis and Hersh have chosen to de-
scribe the mystery rather than explain it away.
Making mathematics accessible to the educated layman,
while keeping high scientific standards, has always been
considered a treacherous navigation between the ~cylla of
professional contempt and the Charybdis of public misun-
derstanding. Davis and Hersh have sailed across the Strait
under full sail. They have opened a discussion of the math-
ematical experience that is inevitable for survival. Watch-
ing from the stern of their ship, we breathe a sigh of relief
as the vortex of oversimplification recedes into the dis-
tance.

GIAN-CARLO ROTA
August 9, 1980

xxm
"The knowledge at which geometry aims is the knowledge
of the eternal."
PLATO, REPUBLIC, VII, 527

"That sometimes clear . . . and sometimes vague

stuff . . . which is . . . mathematics."
IMRE LAKATOS, 1922-1974

"What is laid down, ordered, factual, is never enough to

embrace the whole truth: life always spills over the rim of
every cup."
BORIS PASTERNAK, 1890-1960
Overture

U P TILL ABOUT five years ago, I was a normal

mathematician. I didn't do risky and unortho-
dox things, like writing a book such as this. I had
my "field"-partial differential equations-and
I stayed in it, or at most wandered across its borders into an
adjacent field. My serious thinking, my real intellectual life,
used categories and evaluative modes that I had absorbed
years before, in my training as a graduate student. Because
I did not stray far from these modes and categories, I was
only dimly conscious of them. They were part of the way I
saw the world, not part of the world I was looking at.
My advancement was dependent on my research and
publication in my field. That is to say, there were impor-
tant rewards for mastering the outlook and ways of
thought shared by those whose training was similar to
mine, the other workers in the field. Their judgment
would decide the value of what I did. No one else would be
qualified to do so; and it is very doubtful that anyone else
would have been interested in doing so. To liberate myself
from this outlook-that is, to recognize it, to become
aware that it was only one of many possible ways of looking
at the world, to be able to put it on or off by choice, to com-
pare it and evaluate it with other ways of looking at the
world-none of this was required by my job or my career.
On the contrary, such unorthodox and dubious adven-

1
Overture

tures would have seemed at best a foolish waste of precious

time-at worst, a disreputable dabbling with shady and
suspect ventures such as psychology, sociology, or philo-
sophy.
The fact is, though, that I have come to a point where
my wonderment and fascination with the meaning and
purpose, if any, of this strange activity we call mathematics
is equal to, sometimes even stronger than, my fascination
with actually doing mathematics. I find mathematics an infi-
nitely complex and mysterious world; exploring it is an ad-
diction from which I hope never to be cured. In this, I am
a mathematician like all others. But in addition, I have de-
veloped a second half, an Other, who watches this mathe-
matician with amazement, and is even more fascinated that
such a strange creature and such a strange activity have
come into the world, and persisted for thousands of years.
I trace its beginnings to the day when I came at last to
teach a course called Foundations of Mathematics. This is a
course intended primarily for mathematics majors, at the
upper division (junior or senior) level. My purpose in
teaching this course, as in the others I had taught over the
years, was to learn the material myself. At that time I knew
that there was a history of controversy about the founda-
tions. I knew that there had been three major "schools";
the logicists associated with Bertrand Russell, the formal-
ists led by David Hilbert, and the constructivist school of L.
E. J. Brouwer. I had a general idea of the teaching of each
of these three schools. But I had no idea which one I
agreed with, if any, and I had only a vague idea of what
had become of the three schools in the half century since
their founders were active.
I hoped that by teaching the course I would have the op-
portunity to read and study about the foundations of
mathematics, and ultimately to clarify my own views of
those parts which were controversial. I did not expect to
become a researcher in the foundations of mathematics,
any more than I became a number theorist after teaching
number theory.
Since my interest in the foundations was philosophical
rather than technical, I tried to plan the course so that it

2
 Overture

could be attended by interested students with no special re-

quirements or prerequisites; in particular, I hoped to at-
tract philosophy students, and mathematics education stu-
dents. As it happened there were a few such students;
there were also students from electrical engineering, from
computer science, and other fields. Still, the mathematics
students were the majority. I found a couple of good-look-
ing textbooks, and plunged in.
In standing before a mixed class of mathematics, educa-
tion, and philosophy students, to lecture on the founda-
tions of mathematics, I found myself in a new and strange
situation. I had been teaching mathematics for some 15
years, at all levels and in many different topics, but in all
my other courses the job was not to talk about mathemat-
ics, it was to do it. Here my purpose was not to do it, but to
talk about it. It was different and frightening.
As the semester progressed, it became clear to me that
this time it was going to be a different story. The course
was a success in one sense, for there was a lot of interesting
material, lots of chances for stimulating discussions and in-
dependent study, lots of things for me to learn that I had
never looked at before. But in another sense, I saw that my
project was hopeless.
In an ordinary mathematics class, the program is fairly
clear cut. We have problems to solve, or a method of calcu-
lation to explain, or a theorem to prove. The main work to
be done will be in writing, usually on the blackboard. If the
problems are solved, the theorems proved, or the calcula-
tions completed, then teacher and class know that they
have completed the daily task. Of course, even in this ordi-
nary mathematical setting, there is always the possibility or
likelihood of something unexpected happening. An un-
foreseen difficulty, an unexpected question from a stu-
dent, can cause the progress of the class to deviate from
what the instructor had intended. Still, one knew where
one was supposed to be going; one also knew that the main
thing was what you wrote down. As to spoken words, either
from the class or from the teacher, they were important in-
sofar as they helped to communicate the import of what
was written.

3
Overture

In opening my course on the foundations of mathemat-

ics, I formulated the questions which I believed were cen-
tral, and which I hoped we could answer or at least clarify
by the end of the semester.
What is a number? What is a set? What is a proof? What
do we know in mathematics, and how do we know it? What
is "mathematical rigor"? What is "mathematical intuition"?
As I formulated these questions, I realized that I didn't
know the answers. Of course, this was not surprising, for
such vague questions, "philosophical" questions, should
not be expected to have clearcut answers of the kind we
look for in mathematics. There will always be differences
of opinion about questions such as these.
But what bothered me was that I didn't know what my
own opinion was. What was worse, I didn't have a basis, a
criterion on which to evaluate different opinions, to advo-
cate or attack one view point or another.
I started to talk to other mathematicians about proof,
knowledge, and reality in mathematics and I found that
my situation of confused uncertainty was typical. But I also
found a remarkable thirst for conversation and discussion
about our private experiences and inner beliefs.
This book is part of the outcome of these years of pon-
dering, listening, and arguing.

4
 1
THE
MATHEMATICAL
LANDSCAPE

P.J. Davis, R. Hersh, E.A. Marchisotto, The Mathematical Experience,

Study Edition, Modern Birkhäuser Classics, DOI 10.1007/978-0-8176-8295-8_1,
© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2012
What is
Mathematics?

A NAIVE DEFINITION, adequate for the dictio-

nary and for an initial understanding, is that
mathematics is the science of quantity and space. Ex-
panding this definition a bit, one might add that
mathematics also deals with the symbolism relating to
quantity and to space.
This definition certainly has a historical basis and will
serve us for a start, but it is one of the purposes of this
work to modify and amplify it in a way that reflects the
growth of the subject over the past several centuries and
indicates the visions of various schools of mathematics as to
what the subject ought to be.
The sciences of quantity and of space in their simpler
forms are known as arithmetic and geometry. Arithmetic, as
taught in grade school, is concerned with numbers of vari-
ous sorts, and the rules for operations with numbers-ad-
dition, subtraction, and so forth. And it deals with situa-
tions in daily life where these operations are used.
Geometry is taught in the later grades. It is concerned in
part with questions of spatial measurements. If I draw such
a line and another such line, how far apart will their end
points be? How many square inches are there in a rectan-
gle 4 inches long and 8 inches wide? Geometry is also con-
cerned with aspects of space that have a strong aesthetic
appeal or a surprise element. For example, it tells us that in
any parallelogram whatsoever, the diagonals bisect one an-
other; in any triangle whatsoever, the three medians inter-
sect in a common point. It teaches us that a floor can be

6
 What is Mathematics?

tiled with equilateral triangles or hexagons, but not with

regular pentagons.
But geometry, if taught according to the arrangement
laid out by Euclid in 300 B.c., has another vitally significant
aspect. This is its presentation as a deductive science. Be-
ginning with a number of elementary ideas which are as-
sumed to be self-evident, and on the basis of a few definite
rules of mathematical and logical manipulation, Euclidean
geometry builds up a fabric of deductions of increasing
complexity.
What is stressed in the teaching of elementary geometry
is not only the spatial or visual aspect of the subject but the
methodology wherein hypothesis leads to conclusion. This
deductive process is known as proof Euclidean geometry is
the first example of a formalized deductive system and has
become the model for all such systems. Geometry has been
the great practice field for logical thinking, and the study
of geometry has been held (rightly or wrongly) to provide
the student with a basic training in such thinking.
Although the deductive aspects of arithmetic were clear
to ancient mathematicians, these were not stressed either
in teaching or in the creation of new mathematics until the
1800s. Indeed, as late as the 1950s one heard statements
from secondary school teachers, reeling under the impact
of the "new math," to the effect that they had always
thought geometry had "proof" while arithmetic and alge-
bra did not.
With the increased emphasis placed on the deductive as-
pects of all branches of mathematics, C. S. Peirce in the
middle of the nineteenth century, announced that "mathe-
matics is the science of making necessary conclusions."
Conclusions about what? About quantity? About space?
The content of mathematics is not defined by this defini-
tion; mathematics could be "about" anything as long as it is
a subject that exhibits the pattern of assumption-deduc-
tion-conclusion. Sherlock Holmes remarks to Watson in
The Sign of Four that "Detection is, or ought to be, an exact
science and should be treated in the same cold and unemo-
tional manner. You have attempted to tinge it with roman-
ticism, which produces much the same effect as if you

7
The Mathematical Landscape

worked a love-story or an elopement into the fifth proposi-

tion of Euclid." Here Conan Doyle, with tongue in cheek, is
asserting that criminal detection might very well be consid-
ered a branch of mathematics. Peirce would agree.
The definition of mathematics changes. Each generation
and each thoughtful mathematician within a generation
formulates a definition according to his lights. We shall ex-
amine a number of alternate formulations before we write
Finis to this volume.
Further Readings. See Bibliography
A. Alexandroff; A. Kolmogoroff and M. Lawrentieff; R. Courant and
H. Robbins; T. Danzig [1959]; H. Eves and C. Newsom; M. Gaffney
and L. Steen; N. Goodman; E. Kasner and]. Newman; R. Kershner
and L. Wilcox; M. Kline [1972]; A. Kolmogoroff;J. Newman [1956];
E. Snapper; E. Stabler; L. Steen [1978]

Where is
Mathematics?

W HERE IS THE PLACE of mathematics?

Where does it exist? On the printed page, of
course, and prior to printing, on tablets or on
papyri. Here is a mathematical book-take it
in your hand; you have a palpable record of mathematics
as an intellectual endeavor. But first it must exist in
people's minds, for a shelf of books doesn't create mathe-
matics. Mathematics exists on taped lectures, in computer
memories and printed circuits. Should we say also that it
resides in mathematical machines such as slide rules and
cash registers and, as some believe, in the arrangement of
the stones at Stonehenge? Should we say that it resides in
the genes of the sunflower plant if that plant brings forth
seeds arranged in Bernoullian spirals and transmits
mathematical information from generation to generation?
Should we say that mathematics exists on a wall if a lamp-

8
 The Mathematical Community

shade casts a parabolic shadow on that wall? Or do we be-

lieve that all these are mere shadow manifestations of the
real mathematics which, as some philosophers have as-
serted, exists eternally and independently of this actualized
universe, independently of all possible actualizations of a
universe?
What is knowledge, mathematical or otherwise? In a cor-
respondence with the writer, Sir Alfred Ayer suggests that
one of the leading dreams of philosophy has been "to
agree on a criterion for deciding what there is," to which
we might add, "and for deciding where it is to be found."

The Mathematical
Community

T HERE IS HARDLY a culture, however primi-

tive, which does not exhibit some rudimentary
kind of mathematics. The mainstream of west-
ern mathematics as a systematic pursuit has its
origin in Egypt and Mesopotamia. It spread to Greece and
to the Graeco-Roman world. For some 500 years following
the fall of Rome, the fire of mathematical creativeness was
all but extinguished in Europe; it is thought to have been
preserved in Persia. After some centuries of inactivity, the
flame appeared again in the Islamic world and from there
mathematical knowledge and enthusiasm spread through
Sicily and Italy to the whole of Europe.

A rough timetable would be

Egyptian: 3000 B.c. to 1600 B.C.

Babylonian: 1700 B.c. to 300 B.C.

Greek: 600 B.c. to 200 B.C.

Graeco-Roman: 150 A.D. to 525 A.D.

9
 The Mathematical Landscape

Islamic: 750 A.D. to 1450 A.D.

Western: 1100 A.D . to 1600 A.D.
Modern: 1600 A.D. to present.

Other streams of mathematical activity are the Chinese,

the Japanese, the Hindu, and the Inca-Aztec. The inter-
action between western and eastern mathematics is a sub-
ject of scholarly investigation and conjecture.
At the present time, there is hardly a country in the
world which is not creating new mathematics. Even the
emerging nations, so called, all wish to establish up-to-date
university programs in mathematics, and the hallmark of
excellence is taken to be the research activity of their staffs.
In contrast to the relative isolatio n of early oriental and
western mathematics from each other, the mathematics of
today is unified . It is worked and transmitted in full and
open knowledge. Personal secrecy like that practiced by
the Renaissance and Baroque mathematicians hardly
exists. There is a vast international network of publica-
tions; there are national and international open meetings
and exchanges of scholars and students.
In all honesty, though, it should be admitted that restric-
tion of information has occurred during wartime. There is
also considerable literature on mathematical cryptography,
as practiced by the professional cryptographers, which is
Franc,ois Viete not, for obvious reasons, generally available.
1540-1603 In the past mathematics has been pursued by people in
various walks of life. Thomas Bradwardine (1325) was
Archbishop of Canterbury. Ulugh Beg with his trigono-
metric tables was the grandson of Tamerlane. Luca Pacioli
(1470) was a monk. Ferrari (1548) was a tax assessor. Car-
dana (1550) was professor of medicine. Viete (1580) was a
lawyer in the royal privy council. Van Ceulen (1610) was a
fencing master. Fermat (1635) was a lawyer. Many mathe-
maticians earned part of their living as proteges of the
Crown: John Dee, Kepler, Descartes, Euler; some even
had the title of"Mathematicus." Up to about 1600, a math-
Rene Descartes ematician could earn a few pounds by casting horoscopes
1596-1650 or writing amulets for the wealthy.

10
 The Mathematical Community

What mathematics
looked like in 1700 B.c.
Clay tablet with cunei-
form writing from south-
ern lrtU[. The two prob-
lems that are worked out
follow the standard pro-
cedure in Babylonian
mathematics for qua-
dratic equations.
1 9 (gin) is the (total ex-

penses in) silver of a ki-

ld; I added the length
and the width, and (the
result is) 6;30 (GAR); !
GAR is [its depth] ,
2 10 gin (volume) the as-

signment, 6 se (silver) the

wages. What are the
length (and) its width?
3 When you perform (the

operations), take the re-

ciprocal of the wages,
4 multiply by 9 gin, the

(total expenses in) silver,

(and) you will get 4,30;
5 multiply 4,30 by the as-

signment, (and) you will

Explanation: The drawing is a contemporary version of get 45;
6 take the reciprocal of its
the symbols on the clay tablet. A line by line translation of
depth, multiply by 4 5,
the first twelve lines is given. The notation 3;3,45 used in (and) you will get 7;30;
the translation means 3 + 610 + 3 ~& 0 = 3.0625. In modern 7 halve the length and

terms, the problem posed by this tablet is: given x + y and the width which I added
xy, find x and y. Solution: together, (and) you will
get 3;15;
8 square 3;15, (and) you

x=x;y ±~(x;yr -xy will get 10;33,45;

9 subtract 7;30 from
y=
10;33,45, (and)
10 you will get 3;3,45;

take its square root, (and)

11 you will get 1 ;4 5; add
These days there is nothing to prevent a wealthy person it to the one, subtract it
from pursuing mathematics full or part time in isolation, as from the other, (and)
12 you will get the length
in the era when science was an aristocrat's hobby. But this
(and) the width. 5
kind of activity is now not at a sufficiently high voltage to (GAR) is the length; H
sustain invention of good quality. Nor does the church (or GAR is the width.
the monarchy) support mathematics as it once did. Courtesy: Prof A.]. Sachs, from
NeugebaURr and Sachs, "Mathe-
For the past century, universities have been our princi- matical Cuneiform Texts"

II
The Mathematical Landscape

pal sponsors. By releasing part of his time, the university

encourages a lecturer to engage in mathematical research.
At present, most mathematicians are supported directly or
indirectly by the university, by corporations such as IBM,
or by the federal government, which in 1977 spent about
$130,000,000 on mathematics of all sorts.
To the extent that all children learn some mathematics,
and that a certain small fraction of mathematics is in the
common language, the mathematics community and the
community at large are identical. At the higher levels of
practice, at the levels where new mathematics is created
and transmitted, we are a fairly small community. The
combined membership list of the American Mathematical
Society, the Mathematical Association of America, and the
Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics for the
year 1978 lists about 30,000 names. It is by no means nec-
essary for one to think of oneself as a mathematician to op-
erate at the highest mathematical levels; one might be a
physicist, an engineer, a computer scientist, an economist,
a geographer, a statistician or a psychologist. Perhaps the
American mathematical community should be reckoned at
60 or 90 thousand with corresponding numbers in all the
developed or developing countries.
Numerous regional, national, and international meet-
ings are held periodically. There is lively activity in the
writing and publishing of books at all levels, and there are
more than 1600 individual technicaljournals to which it is
appropriate to submit mathematical material.
These activities make up an international forum in
which mathematics is perpetuated and innovated; in which
discrepancies in practice and meaning are thrashed out.
Further Readings. See Bibliography
R. Archibald; E. Bell; B. Boos and M. Niss; C. Boyer; F. Cajori; J. S.
Frame; R. Gillings; E. Husser!; M. Kline [1972]; U. Libbrecht;
Y. Mikami; J. Needham; 0. Neugebauer; 0. Neugebauer and
A. Sachs; D. Struik; B. Vander Waerden

12
The Tools
of the Trade

W HAT AUXILIARY TOOLS or equipment

are necessary for the pursuit of mathematics?
There is a famous picture showing Archi-
medes poring over a problem drawn in the
sand while Roman soldiers lurk menacingly in the back-
ground. This picture has penetrated the psyche of the pro-
fession and has helped to shape its external image. It tells
us that mathematics is done with a minimum of tools-a
bit of sand, perhaps, and an awful lot of brains.
Some mathematicians like to think that it could even be
done in a dark closet by a solitary man drawing on the
resources of a brilliant platonic intellect. It is true that
mathematics does not require vast amounts of laboratory
equipment, that "Gedankenexperimente" (thought-ex-
periments) are largely what is needed. But it is by no means
fair to say that mathematics is done totally in the head.
Perhaps, in very ancient days, primitive mathematics,
like the great epics and like ancient religions, was transmit-
ted by oral tradition. But it soon became clear that to do
mathematics one must have, at the very least, instruments
of writing or recording and of duplication. Before the in-
vention of printing, there were "scribe factories" for the
wholesale replication of documents.
The ruler and compass are built into the axioms at the
foundation of Euclidean geometry. Euclidean geometry
can be defined as the science of ruler-and-compass con-
structions.
Arithmetic has been aided by many instruments and de-
vices. Three of the most successful have been the abacus,
the slide rule, and the modern electronic computer. And,
the logical capabilities of the computer have already rele-
gated its arithmetic skills to secondary importance.
In the beginning, we used to count computers. There
were four: one in Philadelphia, one in Aberdeen, one in

13
 The Mathematical Landscape

Astrolabe, 1568.

Cambridge, and one in Washington. Then there were ten.

Then, suddenly, there were two hundred. The last figure
heard was thirty-five thousand . The computers prolifer-
ated, and generation followed generation, until now the
fifty dollar hand-held job packs more computing power
than the hippopotamian hulks rusting in the Smithsonian:
the ENIACS, the MARKS, the SEACS, and the GOLEMS.
Perhaps tomorrow the $1.98 computer will flood the drug-
stores and become a throwaway object like a plastic razor
or a piece of Kleenex.
Legend has it that in the late 1940s when old Tom Wat-
son of the IBM corporation learned of the potentialities of
the computer he estimated that two or three of them
would take care of the needs of the nation. Neither he nor
anyone else foresaw how the mathematical needs of the na-
tion would rise up miraculously to fill the available comput-
mg power.

14
 The Tools of the Trade

The relationship of computers to mathematics has been

far more complex than laymen might suspect. Most people
assume that anyone who calls himself a professional math-
ematician uses computing machines. In truth, compared to
engineers, physicists, chemists, and economists, most
mathematicians have been indifferent to and ignorant of
the use of computers. Indeed, the notion that creative
mathematical work could ever be mechanized seems, to
many mathematicians, demeaning to their professional
self-esteem. Of course, to the applied mathematician,
working along with scientists and engineers to get numeri-
cal answers to practical questions, the computer has been
an indispensable assistant for many years.
When programmed appropriately, the computer also
has the ability to perform many symbolic mathematical op-
erations. For example, it can do formal algebra, formal cal-
culus, formal power series expansions and formal work in
differential equations. It has been thought that a program
like FORMAC or MACSYMA would be an invaluable aid
to the applied mathematician. But this has not yet been the
case, for reasons which are not clear.
In geometry, the computer is a drawing instrument of
much greater power than any of the linkages and tem-
plates of the traditional drafting room. Computer graphics
show beautifully shaded and colored pictures of "objects"
which are only mathematically or programatically defined.
The viewer would swear that these images are projected
photographs of real objects. But he would be wrong; the
"objects" depicted have no "real world" existence. In some
cases, they could not possibly have such existence.
On the other hand, it is still sometimes more efficient to
use a physical model rather than attempting a computer
graphics display. A chemical engineering firm, with whose
practice the writer is familiar, designs plants for the petro-
chemical industry. These plants often have reticulated pip-
ing arrangements of a very complicated nature. It is stan-
dard company practice to build a scaled, color-coded
model from little plastic Tinker Toy parts and to work in a
significant way with this physical model.
The computer served to intensify the study of numerical

15
 The Mathematical Landscape

analysis and to wake matrix theory from a fifty-year slum-

ber. It called attention to the importance of logic and of
the theory of discrete abstract structures. It led to the
creation of new disciplines such as linear programming
and the study of computational complexity.
Occasionally, as with the four-color problem (see Chapter
8.), it lent a substantial assist to a classical unsolved prob-
lem, as a helicopter might rescue a Conestoga wagon from
sinking in the mud of the Pecos River. But all these effects
were marginal. Most mathematical research continued to
go on just as it would have if the computing machine did
not exist.
Within the last few years, however, computers have had
a noticeable impact in the field of pure mathematics. This
may be the result of the arrival of a generation of mathe-
maticians who learned computer programming in high
school and to whom a computer terminal is as familiar as a
telephone or a bicycle. One begins to see a change in math-
ematical research. There is greater interest in constructive
and algorithmic results, and decreasing interest in purely
existential or dialectical results that have little or no com-
putational meaning. (See Chapter 4 for further discussion
of these issues.) The fact that computers are available af-
fects mathematics by luring mathematicians to move in di-

Plastic model used by en-

gineering firm .
Courtesy: The Lummus Co.,
Bloomfield, N .J.

16
 How Much Mathematics Is Now Known?

rections where the computer can play a part. Nevertheless,

it is true, even today, that most mathematical research is
carried on without any actual or potential use of com-
puters.
Further Readings. See Bibliography
D. Hartree; W. Meyer zur Capellen; F.J. Murray [1961]; G. R. Stibitz;
M. L. Dertouzos and J. Moses; H. H. Goldstine [1972] [1977];
I. Taviss; P. Henrici [ 1974]; J. Traub

How Much
Mathematics
Is Now Known?

T HE MATHEMATICS BOOKS at Brown Uni-

versity are housed on the fifth floor of the Sci-
ences Library. In the trade, this is commonly re-
garded as a fine mathematical collection, and a
rough calculation shows that this floor contains the equiva-
lent of 60,000 average-sized volumes. Now there is a cer-
tain redundancy in the contents of these volumes and a
certain deficiency in the Brown holdings, so let us say these
balance out. To this figure we should add, perhaps, an
equal quantity of mathematical material in adjacent areas
such as engineering, physics, astronomy, cartography, or
in new applied areas such as economics. In this way, wear-
rive at a total of, say, 100,000 volumes.
One hundred thousand volumes. This amount of knowl-
edge and information is far beyond the comprehension of
any one person. Yet it is small compared to other collec-
tions, such as physics; medicine, law, or literature. Within
the lifetime of a man living today, the whole of mathematics
was considered to be essentially within the grasp of a de-
voted student. The Russian-Swiss mathematician Alex-

17
 The Mathematical Landscape

ander Ostrowski once said that when he came up for his

qualifying examination at the University of Marburg
(around 1915) it was expected that he would be prepared
to deal with any question in any branch of mathematics.
The same assertion )'Vould not be made today. In the late
1940s, John vori Neumann estimated that a skilled mathe-
matician might know, in essence, ten percent of what was
available. There is a popular saying that knowledge always
adds, never subtracts. This saying persists despite such
shocking assessments as that of A. N . Whitehead who ob-
served that Europe in 1500 knew less than Greece knew
at the time of Archimedes. Mathematics builds on itself;
it is aggregative. Algebra builds on arithmetic. Geometry
John von Neumann builds on arithmetic and on algebra. Calculus builds on all
1903-1957 three. Topology is an offshoot of geometry, set theory, and
algebra. Differential equations builds on calculus, topol-
ogy, and algebra. Mathematics is often depicted as a
mighty tree with its roots, trunk, branches, and twigs la-
belled according to certain subdisciplines. It is a tree that
grows in time.
Constructs are enlarged and filled in. New theories are
created. New mathematical objects are delineated and put
under the spotlight. New relations and interconnections
are found, thereby expressing new unities. New applica-
tions are sought and devised.
As this occurs, what is old and true is retained-at least
in principle. Everything that once was mathematics re-
mains mathematics-at least in principle. And so it would
appear that the subject is a vast, increasing organism, with
branch upon branch of theory and practice. The prior
branch is prerequisite for the understanding of the subse-
quent branch. Thus, the student knows that in order to
study and understand the theory of differential equations,
he should have had courses in elementary calculus and in
linear algebra. This serial dependence is in contrast to
other disciplines, such as art or music. One can like or
"understand" modern art without being familiar with
baroque art; one can create jazz without any grounding
in seventeenth century madrigals.

18
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
 All the men were silent now. One or two looked eager and
impressed, one or two alarmed. Long John, after a silence which
might almost be felt, spoke again.
“If we don’t give him away, he gives us away.”
“No,” said the man called Danvers, “’tain’t in Silver to give
evidence agin his pals.”
“We have him in a cleft stick,” continued Long John. “Seeing
himself at our mercy he will turn round and defy us. Has he not
done so already? To-night, in your presence, mates, he named
impossible conditions; when they were not acceded to, he went
away with threatening words on his lips. He has done us harm, and,
I repeat again, he must go. A diamond, well known to the police,
has been found in his establishment. His wife has worn it. It is,
doubtless, even now written in their records as part of the stolen
goods from Rowton Heights. I repeat once again, the man must go.
Do not let us discuss the fact of his going. A word or two as to the
means and this meeting may break up.”
Just then there came a timid knock at the door.
Scrivener went on tiptoe to open it. The servant girl who brought
it stood without. She handed a little twisted note.
Scrivener took it to Long John. He opened it, read the contents,
and thrust it into his pocket.
“I have grave information here,” he said. “Spider is in town, and
has been acting the spy for us as usual. We have no time to lose,
mates. The police have already got wind of Silver’s identity. Spider
has informed me in this note that they identify him with Adrian
Rowton, master of Rowton Heights. Before twenty-four hours are
over he will be arrested. Now, look here, we arrest him first. You
understand, don’t you?”
“Yes,” answered several voices. They were all eager now. Their
apathy had vanished.
 “We have a wine party here to-morrow night,” said Long John,
rising as he spoke. “Scrivener, it will be your duty to bring Silver here
as guest. Use fair means to get him to come, if necessary; if not, lie
to him. Good-night, men. We meet to-morrow evening at nine.”
 CHAPTER XXXIV.
A TOAST.

Absorbed in his own disturbed thoughts, Rowton never knew that

he was followed. Simpkins saw him enter the little hotel off the
Strand which has been mentioned in an earlier part of this story.
At an early hour on the following morning, as Rowton was having
breakfast in the coffee room, Scrivener was announced. The landlord
brought in the information.
“There’s a man of the name of Dawson outside,” he said to
Rowton, “he’ll be glad to speak to you for a minute.”
“Show him in,” said Rowton, nodding.
The next moment Scrivener stood before him.
“Ah, Dawson,” said Rowton, taking his cue immediately, “what may
your business be?”
“Nothing much,” replied Scrivener. “I have come here with a
message from the club.”
“Well, sit down and have a cup of coffee. I’ll walk out with you
presently.”
Scrivener, otherwise Dawson, complied. The two men drank coffee
together. Then Rowton rose from his seat.
“We can take a turn on the Embankment,” he said.
A moment later the men were seen walking side by side on the
Thames Embankment. The morning was a fine one, and a fresh
breeze from the river blew on their faces. A man with a smooth face
and a perfectly innocent expression passed them slowly. He looked
full at Rowton, who nodded to him.
 “That is my servant, Jacob,” he said, turning to Scrivener. “What is
he doing here?”
“Mischief,” muttered Scrivener. “We had best not be seen in such
an open place as this. Let us turn up this by-street into the Strand.”
The men did so. From the Strand they passed into a narrow court.
In the court was a public-house. They entered it, asked for a private
room, and sat down by the fire. Scrivener took out his pipe and
lighted it, but Rowton did not smoke.
“Now,” said Rowton, “your business, and quickly.”
“The boss is sorry you parted from him in anger,” said Scrivener.
“There’s a wine party at our club to-night, and I was to bring you a
special invitation. Long John has sent it to you himself. Matters may
be smoothed over. Long John naturally does not want to get into
your black books. Will you come, or will you not? That is the
question.”
“When I left the club yesterday evening,” said Rowton, “I said I
would never darken its doors again.”
“That is likely enough. I don’t wonder you took some of the words
the chief said rather hard; but if matters are spliced up between us,
you won’t forsake your own School, will you, mate?”
“If the boy is given back to me I’ll not forsake the School,” said
Rowton after a pause.
“I believe that will be done,” said Scrivener. “Anyhow you are
bidden to come to-night to talk over the matter.”
“Are you square with me?” asked Rowton, looking full into
Scrivener’s face.
“As square as daylight,” replied the man.
Rowton turned away with a suppressed sigh.
“I’ll be there,” he said; “not that I believe matters will be
smoothed over. This will doubtless be my last visit.”
 “No, mate,” answered Scrivener, “we cannot do without a jolly dog
like you.”
“I’ll be there; that is enough,” answered Rowton.
“One last word before I go, mate,” said Scrivener. “You had best
keep dark to-day. The police have got wind of your identity and are
after you.”
“How do you know?” asked Rowton.
“Long John had a warning last night. Spider is in town, and is
prying round as usual. It is true, I tell you. You may thank your stars
that you have not been arrested before this. It is all the doings of
that footman of yours.”
“My footman! Do you mean Jacob Short?”
“I mean Jacob Short. He is a spy from Scotland Yard. Now you
know enough, and I dare not breathe another word.”
Scrivener went away, but Rowton sat on by the fire in the back
room of the public-house. His thoughts and sensations were known
to himself alone. After a time he got up, paid for the use of the
room, and by a circuitous route got back again to the hotel in the
Strand. As he was going in he came face to face with Jacob standing
near the door of the hotel.
“What are you doing here?” asked Rowton.
“I came up for a holiday, sir. I hope to return to my duties to-
morrow night.”
“See you do. I don’t wish my servants to come to town without
my special permission.”
Rowton spoke in his chuffiest and most forbidding tones. Jacob’s
face flushed. Rowton ran quickly upstairs to his room. It was at the
top of the house. On the landing outside a ladder was placed which
communicated with a skylight. Rowton packed a few things in a
black bag, and a moment afterwards, had anyone looked, might
have been seen crossing the leads of the house to another at some
distance off. Jacob did not catch sight of Rowton again that day,
although he kicked his heels for a long time at the door of the hotel.
Punctually at the appointed hour the men met at the smoking club
in Chelsea. Their full number was present. Long John looked at his
best. At such moments he could be delightful. He was gracious now,
unbending; there was not a shadow of care on his brow; his great
eyes glowed with the softest and sweetest expression, his lips
unbent in genial smiles. There are times when even men of the
Silver School can relax, and, to all appearance, forget their cares.
The present seemed to be one.
“Welcome back,” said Long John to Rowton. He went down the
room to meet his guest, shaking hands with him warmly.
“You know the condition on which I have come,” answered
Rowton.
“Yes,” replied Long John, “but we won’t discuss unpleasantnesses
until after supper. Now, men, let us gather round and enjoy
ourselves.”
The men sat round a table and began to smoke and drink. The
wine was of the best. Under its influence they all soon became
convivial and merry. Even Rowton lost his sense of depression; he
filled his glass several times. Soon toasts of different kinds were
proposed. The men talked in metaphor, and slang terms were freely
used.
“To the success of our next meeting,” said Long John, rising from
his seat, and raising a glassful of wine high into the air drained it off
at a bumper.
“To a short life and a merry one,” said Rowton, rising also in his
turn.
“To the sale of the black diamond,” cried Scrivener.
Scrivener was seated next to Rowton. At this moment Long John
gave him an almost imperceptible signal. Taking up a wine bottle
which stood near he filled Rowton’s glass to the brim.
 “To the sale of the black diamond,” he repeated.
All the men, in a spirit of high bravado, drained off their glasses. A
moment later they sat down. Other toasts followed. The party grew
wilder and more merry. Each man capped his neighbour’s story. The
room was clouded with smoke, and echoed from end to end with the
sound of boisterous mirth. Suddenly, in the midst of a very wild and
daring tale, Rowton staggered to his feet. He made a step or two
forward in the chief’s direction.
“You scoundrel, you have poisoned me!” he cried.
 CHAPTER XXXV.
WAGES.

The moment Rowton spoke Long John rapped his hand loudly on
the board. He rose and spoke in a clear and penetrating voice.
“Silence, men,” he said, “I have something to say.”
Every tongue was instantly arrested.
“I wish to state a fact,” continued Long John, just glancing for a
moment at Rowton, who, white to his lips, was standing near. “Our
gentleman leader, Adrian Rowton, of Rowton Heights, in Yorkshire,
otherwise known to this school by the name of Silver, has been in
debt to us to the tune of five hundred pounds. The debt was
contracted on behalf of a certain diamond, which we all know here
as the black diamond. The diamond was of great worth, and from
different circumstances in connection with its coming into our
possession, its presence in the School was fraught with extreme
danger. Silver was commissioned to take it to Spain and sell it there
for two thousand pounds, a sum, as you know, very much below its
intrinsic value. Silver did sell the diamond, but, as it turns out, he
sold it to himself for five hundred pounds below the price I set upon
it. In this manner he contracted a debt to our School of five hundred
pounds. By securing the diamond for himself he contracted a further
debt, the dimensions of which cannot be measured. This further
debt formed the subject of our very painful discussion last night. The
first debt was of small importance; the second debt was vital. There
was only one way in which Rowton could pay the second debt. I
wish to tell you all, now, my men, that Adrian Rowton has cleared
the debt. His record with us is white.”
“Hold a minute,” said Rowton. His voice was loud but somewhat
shaky. He was staggering with mortal pain. “All here present have
acted towards me with treachery. There’s not a man in this room
who did not know what Long John wanted me here for. You,
Scrivener, lured me to this place by means of a lie. When I came
here I trusted to your honour, mates. You have every one of you
failed me.”
Some of the men groaned, lowered their eyes, and some shuffled
restlessly with their feet. Long John tapped again on the table.
“The old trite proverb that ‘all is fair in love and war’ applies here,”
he said. “There was only one way to wipe out Rowton’s debt, and
that way has been used.”
“A word more,” continued Rowton; “my debt will be wiped out
soon, but there is another debt to cancel. Long John, you kidnapped
the boy. If my record is white, yours is black. I forgive the rest of
you fellows—you did what you did under compulsion. But as to you,
you coward, I swear that if I appear before my Maker unabsolved
and with my sins upon me, so do you.”
Quick as thought Rowton produced a revolver and fired. He aimed
at Long John’s heart. The man saw his danger, swerved an inch, and
received the bullet in his right arm.
All was immediately confusion and alarm. Rowton, after firing, fell
to the ground in strong convulsions. Long John, white as a sheet,
caught up a napkin to stay the blood which began to pour from his
wounded arm. Simpkins rushed to one of the windows to shut it,
fearing that the police might have heard the sound of the shot. Long
John’s face became more and more ghastly—a smile kept coming
and going on his thin lips. Simpkins ran forward to help him.
Scrivener and another man approached the heap on the floor which
had represented the strong, athletic form of Rowton not ten minutes
ago.
“What are you trying to say, mate?” whispered Scrivener.
“Take me where I can be alone.”
The two men tried to lift him in their arms.
 “Stay,” called Long John; “we can put cushions on the floor and lay
him here. I am going. One word to you, Rowton, before we part; we
have not yet squared the record.”
“We wait for that,” answered Rowton. He raised his glassy eyes
and fixed them on Long John’s cadaverous face.
Long John staggered to the door. The other men hurried to place
cushions and coats in a corner on the floor. They laid the dying man
on them.
“How long have I to live?” he asked.
“I do not know,” returned Scrivener, “but I think for two or three
hours. We gave that poison before to——”
“Hush!” said Simpkins suddenly, clapping his hands across
Scrivener’s mouth.
“I forgot myself in the excitement of the moment,” answered
Scrivener. “I wish I’d never done the ghastly deed—Rowton of all
men! If it were not for Long John, and that he’d find a way to hurry
one out of the world if one did not do his slightest wish, why——”
Scrivener wiped the dew from his face.
“Ours is a ghastly calling,” said Simpkins. “There, mates,” he
added, turning to where a group of the men were huddled together
in a distant part of the room, “you had best leave us. Long John is
not killed, but he has got his deserts after a fashion, and he’ll have
to lie dark for a bit. The rest of you go home, and be quick about it.
When we want you again we’ll let you know.”
The men still hesitated. At last one of them, treading on tiptoe,
came to the upper end of the room.
“Shake hands, mate,” said this fellow, going on his knees and
holding out his hand to Rowton. “Say you forgive us before we go.”
“I forgive you, mates,” answered Rowton; “you were only tools.
There is one man whom I do not forgive, and that is your boss. He
acted with treachery and you were not courageous enough to resist.
Now go. I have only a short time to live and much to do.”
One by one the men came up, looked at his ashy face, shook their
heads, and slowly left the room.
When they had all gone Rowton spoke to Simpkins.
“What did he give me?” he asked.
With some hesitation Simpkins named a drug, bending low to do
so.
Rowton’s face could not grow more ghastly.
“Then it is certain death,” he said.
“Yes, certain death; but, if you like, we’ll fetch a doctor.”
“Never mind. Were enquiries set on foot, things would go badly
with you. I die, I hope, as a man——”
He paused, struggling for breath.
“I always knew,” he continued, “that the fate I have met might be
mine. There is no hope, you say. I may live for—two hours.”
“You may, mate, but it is not certain. You are taking the dose
hard,” said Scrivener.
“I want you to do something for me, Scrivener.”
“Anything,” replied the man, falling on his knees.
“Fetch my wife here.”
“Your wife!” said Simpkins suddenly. “Dare you see her, mate?”
“I dare anything. I have one last—desperate wish; it must be
granted. I must see my wife.”
“But if she is in Yorkshire, Silver?” queried Scrivener.
“I have a premonition that she is in London,” replied Rowton. His
words came more and more slowly, with longer and longer gasps
between. “Scrivener—you know Rowton Heights? Wire there at once
—get Mrs. Rowton’s address in London, and then fetch her here. You
don’t object, do you? If so, at any cost, I’ll get back to my hotel.”
“I’ll do what you wish,” said Scrivener.
“It seems reasonable enough,” echoed Simpkins.
“Of course, you’ll take an oath, pal,” continued Scrivener, “that
you’ll let out nothing.”
The ghost of a smile played round Rowton’s white lips.
“Heaven knows I am a deeply-dyed scoundrel,” he said, “but
honour among thieves. You may bring Mrs. Rowton to this house
without danger to the Silver School.”
Scrivener left the room without another word, and Simpkins
seated himself by the dying man.
As Scrivener ran downstairs he could not help muttering some
words to himself.
“Ours is a beastly calling; there’s no mercy in a school like ours. If
it were anyone but Rowton I should not mind a brass button—but
Rowton! ’Tain’t that he was soft; ’tain’t that he was specially kind;
but he was straight, although he belonged to us. We’ll go to pieces
now without him. Long John made a huge mistake.”
Scrivener sprang into a cab and drove to the nearest post-office.
From there he wired to Rowton Heights, remaining in the office until
the message bearing Mrs. Rowton’s address in town was sent to
him. He then hailed another hansom and drove straight to the
Universal Hotel.
This was the night on which Nance had come to London and had
received Crossley’s awful communication. She had driven straight to
the hotel with Lady Georgina, and when Scrivener was suddenly
announced the two ladies were in a private sitting-room. From the
moment she left Clapham Common Nance had talked incessantly.
She had seemed to all appearances in the highest spirits. She had
refused to disclose the faintest hint with regard to her interview with
Crossley. Beyond telling Lady Georgina that she believed the man to
be altogether mistaken about a certain business which he had
undertaken for her, she turned her conversation resolutely from the
subject.
“I feel in good spirits,” she said once or twice. “I have the same
feeling which possessed me the night of the ball at Rowton Heights.
How long ago did the ball take place, Lady Georgina?”
“Only two days ago, child,” was the reply.
“It seems months back,” said Nance, pushing her hair from her
flushed face. “I told Adrian then that my excitement and high spirits
were almost ‘fey,’ as the saying is. I have the same feeling to-night.
Never mind; while I feel happy let me enjoy life. I believe that I shall
soon hear news of the boy and also of my husband. Ah! who is
that?”
At this moment Scrivener was announced. Nance, with the flush
on her cheeks and the queer bright light in her eyes, went forward
at once to meet him. She felt stimulated all over to an extraordinary
degree. Crossley had spoken the most utter nonsense. His tidings
had not given her the slightest pain. A shadow of doubt of the man
she loved could not visit her loyal heart.
“I seem to know your face,” she said, looking into that of
Scrivener with a puzzled expression. “Ah, yes, I remember now.
Surely I saw you once at Rowton Heights.”
“I saw you also, madam,” said the man.
He bowed awkwardly. Then his eyes travelled to Lady Georgina,
who, bold, upright, and firm, stood not far away.
“I have a message for you alone, Mrs. Rowton,” he said.
“Please leave us, Lady Georgina,” said Nance.
“I will not,” replied Lady Georgina. “You are left in my charge by
your husband, Nance, and I prefer to remain with you whatever
happens. Sir, I do not know what your business can be with this
young lady, but I must ask you to say it before me.”
“Very well, madam,” replied the man. “We have not a moment to
lose, Mrs. Rowton,” he continued; “your husband has sent for you. I
am commissioned to bring you to him immediately.”
“To bring me to him!” said Nance, her eyes lighting up with
sudden tumultuous joy. “I won’t keep you. But why can he not come
to me?”
“He cannot, madam: he is very ill.”
“Ill!” said Nance. She started violently. Her face grew white. “I
won’t keep you a single moment,” she said.
“I’ll go with you, dear,” said Lady Georgina.
“I am sorry, madam,” said Scrivener, “but on that point I am
obliged to be firm. I cannot possibly take you with Mrs. Rowton. If
she wishes to see her husband alive she must trust herself to me
alone. I swear no harm will happen to her.”
“If I wish to see my husband alive?” repeated Nance. “Oh! for
Heaven’s sake, don’t put obstacles in the way now, Lady Georgina. I
won’t keep you a moment,” she said, again turning to the man.
She flew out of the room, returning in less than a minute in her
hat and cloak.
“I am ready,” she said, “let us come.”
“This is an awful situation,” exclaimed Lady Georgina. “I promised
to look after that child. How do I know, sir, that you are not
deceiving me?”
“I swear on the Bible, madam, that I am not. Mr. Rowton has sent
for his wife. He is very ill. If you refuse to let Mrs. Rowton come with
me I must go away without her.”
“In that case, I have no alternative,” said Lady Georgina; “I only
trust I am not doing wrong.”
 Nance and Scrivener left the room. A hansom was in waiting
outside the hotel.
Nance entered and Scrivener immediately followed her. He gave
directions in a low voice to the driver, and the cab started forward at
a quick pace. Presently Scrivener put his hand through the little
window in the roof.
“A sovereign,” he called to the driver, “if you get us to our
destination in a quarter of an hour from now.”
The man whipped up his horse.
“You said that my husband was very ill; is he in danger?” asked
Nance.
“He is, madam, in extreme danger.”
Nance did not ask another question. She locked her hands tightly
under her cloak. Her face was deathlike. She looked like one carved
in stone.
By-and-by the cab entered a squalid street leading off the
Embankment. It turned to the left, then to the right, then to the left
again, and finally drew up at a shabby-looking door. Scrivener
jumped out.
“This way, Mrs. Rowton,” he said.
He flung the sovereign to the driver, and then knocked in a
peculiar way on the door.
It was opened immediately by a shabbily-dressed girl, whose eyes
were red from violent weeping.
“All right upstairs, Sophy?” asked Scrivener.
“Silver is still alive,” answered Sophy with a catch in her voice.
“Silver,” repeated Nance to herself in a low tone.
It was at this awful moment of her life that a memory came back
to her. She had forgotten it until now. Earlier in that same evening
Crossley had told her that her husband, her brave husband, whom
he presently accused of the most ghastly crime, was also known as
Silver, the leader of a school or mob of burglars, called the Silver
School. The information seemed to her so baseless and false, and
was also so completely swallowed up in the grave and monstrous
accusation which followed it, that until now it was completely blotted
out of her memory.
“Silver,” she said, looking with dilated eyes at Scrivener as they
mounted the stairs. “Who is Silver?”
“Never mind about Silver now, madam; I am taking you to see
your husband, Mr. Rowton, of Rowton Heights.”
Nance asked no more questions. The next moment they found
themselves inside the club room. The greater part of the long room
was in complete darkness, but at the farther end a paraffin lamp
flared. Nance saw dimly as she entered the figure of a man lying on
the floor.
When he heard her step Rowton raised himself with an effort.
 “When he heard her step Rowton raised himself with an
effort.”—Page 305.

“My wife has come,” he said to Simpkins. “Leave us. Go into

another room.”
 CHAPTER XXXVI.
THE DARKNESS BEFORE THE DAWN.

Nance fell on her knees by the dying man. She took one of his
cold hands in hers.
“Little woman,” said Rowton. “Come close to me, Nance,” he
continued in an almost inaudible whisper; “hold my hand tighter—I
cannot feel your clasp.”
She put both her hands round it, fondling it close to her breast.
“Are we alone, Nancy?”
“Yes, darling, quite alone.”
“That is—good. I have much to say to you.”
“Darling, don’t talk if it gives you pain. I can guess your thoughts,
I know you so well.”
“Heavens! She knows me so well,” repeated the dying man.
“Has a doctor been sent for, Adrian?”
“No use.”
“But I thought you were strong, in good health. What is the
meaning of this agony?”
“Heart,” he said in a whisper. “I have—known—it long—disease of
long standing—hopeless; never mind—no doctor can cure me. Listen
—Nancy mine.”
She bent down until her white face was almost on a level with his.
“Speak, dearest, beloved,” she said in her softest voice. “Your very
lowest word will be heard by me. Everything you tell me I will do. I
am all yours, remember, both in life and death.”
 “There never was—such an angel,” he replied, and a faint, half-
mocking, yet utterly sweet smile flitted across his face.
“Nancy, my strength is going. See you get the boy.”
“Yes.”
“Listen, Nance. Simpkins knows where he is—so does—Scrivener.
So, I fancy, does Sophy—the girl in this house. If—Simpkins and
Scrivener fail you—turn to—Sophy. She was always fond of me—
poor Sophy! If she—helps you—take her away with you afterwards—
for in doing—what you want, she may bring her own—life—into
danger. Go away yourself, too. Little woman—you’ll hear terrible
things.”
“I don’t care,” she replied. “What are terrible tidings to me if I
don’t believe them?”
Rowton smiled into her eyes.
“I would—I might always remain thy white knight,” he said. “Black
to everyone else—but white to thee. There!—it is too much to hope.”
He panted, his breath failed him. Nance held some brandy to his
lips. He presently closed his eyes.
She sat down on the floor by his side, and slipped her arm under
his neck, so that his head rested on her breast.
He felt the warm beating of the loving heart and opened his eyes.
“Are you there?” he said. “I can’t see; are you there?”
“Yes,” she replied. “Do you think I could leave you?”
“Never,” he replied. “My angel who believed in the angel in me.
Nancy, I am the blackest scoundrel—on earth.”
“No, no,” she then said with a sob. “Don’t revile yourself now. To
one person you have always been white.”
“As an angel, Nancy mine?”
 “As an angel,” she replied. “You have been the one hero of my life
—immaculate, strong, as you said yourself, my white knight.”
The dying man moved restlessly.
“Child,” he said, “you will hear things.” His voice grew lower and
lower. “I have brought thee into the lowest scrape—into the depths.
You will know hereafter what I have done for thee, Little Nancy.”
“I don’t wish to know; I will not listen. Whatever I hear, nothing
will turn my love,” she replied.
“Is that indeed so? Say—those words again.”
“Nothing in heaven above or hell beneath can change my
unalterable love,” she repeated.
“Fold my hands, Nance—together—so. Father in Heaven—if a
weak woman can be so forgiving, wilt not Thou—even Thou—have
mercy?”
The last words were scarcely distinguishable. Nance kept the
folded hands together. A smile came suddenly on the white lips, a
longer and slower breath than any of the others, then stillness.
Half an hour afterwards Simpkins softly opened the door of the
room and came on tiptoe to Nancy’s side. He saw at a glance that
the chief was dead. Nance was kneeling by him, her face hidden
against his breast.
“Come, madam; I am dreadfully sorry, but you dare not stay here
another moment,” said the man in a tone of great pity and
sympathy.
At the words she raised her head and gave him a bewildered
glance. She rose to her feet, staggering slightly.
“I do not wish to leave here,” she said. “I want to remain by my
husband’s body.”
“Hurry, Simpkins, hurry!” said Scrivener’s voice at that moment in
the doorway.
 “You must not stay, madam. It is as much as our lives are worth. I
must tell you something.”
“Nothing against the dead,” said Nancy, speaking in a strong full
tone; “I forbid you.”
“No, we won’t mention his name,” said Simpkins. “I honour you,
madam, for your loyalty. But as matters have turned out, he might,
poor fellow, have met a worse fate. I won’t say any more. Whatever
his faults he died true to us. Mrs. Rowton, it has been our misfortune
to get into the black books of the law, and even at this moment the
house is surrounded by police.”
“What do you mean?”
“What I say. The police have got wind of our whereabouts. They
will burst into this room in a moment or two. No they cannot touch
the dead, but you must leave us, madam.”
“Is your name Simpkins?” inquired Nance suddenly.
“Yes, madam.”
“Then I have a message for you from my husband. He said that
you knew of the whereabouts of his nephew, Murray Cameron. His
last injunction to me was to find the boy. I must find him. Will you
help me?”
“Yes,” said Scrivener, who came forward at that moment. “We’ll
both help you, lady. We do not want the boy any more. Our School
is broken up after to-night. Go at once, Mrs. Rowton. I know your
hotel. Your husband’s nephew will join you there before the
morning. Go now.”
A sudden noise was heard downstairs—the trampling of feet.
“Heavens! we are lost,” cried Scrivener. “Go, madam; they cannot
touch your dead; but if you do as he wishes, you will leave us now.”
“Yes, I will go,” said Nance. “But one moment first.”
She fell on her knees by the body of her husband, and bending
down printed a long kiss on the cold lips. In doing so she noticed
that the lips themselves were smooth and undisfigured. There was
no mark.

Scrivener was true to his word, and early the following morning
Murray Cameron was restored to his friends. Crossley, aided by
Jacob Short, had given the alarm to the police, and the Silver School
was broken up for ever.
Nance returned for one night to Rowton Heights—it was just
before she and Murray started to begin a new life in Australia—her
object was to secure a certain box.
“I do not know what it contains,” she reflected, “but if it means
revenge, I would rather break my vow to the dead than use it now!”
She packed it carefully, and, half way between England and the
New World, dropped it into deep water. Thus its secret was never
revealed.
But afterwards a dying man in Paris made a strange confession.
He declared to the priest who absolved him that for years he had
belonged to a notorious gang of burglars in London, who went by
the name of the Silver School. He himself was known by the
sobriquet of Spider. Amongst the queer friendships of his life was
one with the gentleman leader of that gang, a man called Silver. The
likeness between the two was remarkable, and there was an
occasion when, for purposes of his own, it came into Spider’s head
to personate Silver. He did so in order to take the life of a young
Englishman with whom he had quarrelled in a Parisian café. The
Englishman had discovered one of his most important secrets, and
Spider, with the ruthlessness of his class, resolved to silence him in
the only effectual way. In order to divert suspicion entirely from
himself, he used a cipher and hieroglyphic, the secret of which
Rowton had once confided to him.
“On my lips,” said the dying man, “you will find the mark of a
death’s head and arrows which was tattooed there years ago. You
may use this confession after my death.”

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