“Very well (take care of that barge).—I revert to my original postulate. You said—‘Did ever man meet the devil half-way with such a sense of humour?’—and I answered: ‘You have none.’”
“You did—and I throw the word in your teeth. No man, I make bold to say, has more than I.”
“Yet you propose killing yourself?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“My mission in life was to be foil to the virtuous. ’Tis a costly business, and not to be maintained save with luck. Luck has cold-shouldered me. I have staked and lost my last penny, and so my mission ends; and I jump off the cliff of the world with a light heart.”
“And with a poor sense of humour. I repeat it.”
“Pardon me. You said with no sense of humour.”
“Well—I qualify that.”
“That is a concession from a lawyer. Now, has it occurred to you that you have obtruded yourself upon a reckless and desperate man?—that, to a lost soul standing on the brink of Cocytus, it may seem a small matter, and the humouring of a very trifling aggravation, to push a fellow-traveller over into the gulf before he leaps himself?—At this moment it suggests itself to me that no ghostly letter of credit would serve me half so well down there as an attorney in esse. The devil needs lawyers to argue his case. Generally they evade him at the last by some technicality. Shall I take you, to prove at least that suicides come not, without exception, of the humourless class?”