find a few
good words to say about the man whose life had ended so suddenly.

The youngest of them, Fritz Bormann, said some kind words and was about
to wax more enthusiastic, when Degenhart, the eldest clerk, cut in with
the words: "Oh, don't trouble yourself. Nobody ever liked Winkler here.
'He was not a good man--he was not even a good worker. This is the first
time that he has a reasonable excuse for neglecting his duties."

"Oh, come, see here! how can you talk about the poor man that way when
he's scarcely cold in death yet," said Fritz indignantly.

Degenhart laughed harshly.

"Did I ever say anything else about him while he was warm and alive?
Death is no reason for changing one's opinion about a man who was
good-for-nothing in life. And his death was a stroke of good luck that
he scarcely deserved. He died without a moment's pain, with a merry
thought in his head, perhaps, while many another better man has to
linger in torture for weeks. No, Bormann, the best I can say about
Winkler is that his death makes one nonentity the less on earth."

The older man turned to his desk again and the two younger clerks
continued the conversation: "Degenhart appears to be a hard man," said
Fritz, "but he's the best and kindest person I know, and he's dead right
in what he says. It was simply a case of conventional superstition. I
never did like that Winkler."

"No, you're right," said the other. "Neither did I and I don't know why,
for the matter of that. He seemed just like a thousand others. I never
heard of anything particularly wrong that he did."

"No, no more did I," continued Bormann, "but I never heard of anything
good about him either. And don't you think that it's worse for a man
to seem to repel people by his very personality, rather than by any
particular bad thing that he does?"

"Yes. I don't know how to explain it, but that's just how I feel about
it. I had an instinctive feeling that there was something wrong about
Winkler, the sort of a creepy, crawly feeling that a snake gives you."

CHAPTER IV. SPEAK WELL OF THE DEAD

Meanwhile Pokomy and Mrs. Klingmayer had reached the police station and
were going upstairs to the rooms of the commissioner on service for the
day. Like all people of her class, Mrs. Klingmayer stood in great awe
and terror of anything connected with the police or the law generally.
She crept slowly and tremblingly up the stairs behind the head
bookkeeper and was very glad