“Don’t try,” Peter Ruff interrupted briskly. “It isn’t in the bond that you should understand.”
Sir Richard helped himself to a drink. A great burden had passed from his shoulders, but he was not feeling at his best that morning. He could scarcely keep his eyes from Peter Ruff.
“Ruff,” he said, “I have known you some time, and I have known you to be a square man. I have known you to do good-natured actions. I came to you in desperation but I scarcely expected this!”
Peter Ruff emptied his own tumbler and took up his hat.
“Sir Richard,” he said, “you are like a good many other people. Now that the thing is done, you shrink from the thought of it. You even wonder how I could have planned to bring about the death of this man. Listen, Sir Richard. Pity for the deserving, or for those who have in them one single quality, one single grain, of good, is a sentiment which deserves respect. Pity for vermin, who crawl about the world leaving a poisonous trail upon everything they touch, is a false and unnatural sentiment. For every hopelessly corrupt man who is induced to quit this life there is a more deserving one, somewhere or other, for whom the world is a better place.”
“So that, after all, you are a philanthropist, Mr. Ruff,” Sir Richard said, with a forced smile.
Peter Ruff shook his head.
“A philosopher,” he answered, buttoning up his notes.