"No, I won't. I'll have my market price as an engineer—no more and no less. I can do for one dollar what any fool can do for two. I want my share of the dollar I save."
"You won't get it, old chap."
"But I will! I'll tell you what I'll do. If you chuck this sharp practice and send those engines back, we'll make this place pay well, and the council shall give us our whack."
Darwen was thoughtful for a minute. "They won't do it," he said. "The fool in the street, the voter, whose mind runs in shillings per week, wouldn't let them. In municipal work it doesn't pay to be honest."
Carstairs stroked his chin in perplexity. "You're an enigma to me. You seem such a sound sort of chap in most things. Damn it! One doesn't expect a Clifton man to be a blasted rogue. Can't you run on straight lines? You know you're bound to get bowled out sooner or later."
"Don't be such a pessimist, Carstairs. I hate pessimists. Let me assure you, you are equally an enigma to me. I fail entirely to comprehend your mind. Why do you worry and dissipate your energies deciding what is right and what is wrong? What you really want to know is, what is best. There is nothing wrong in this best of all worlds, only degrees of rightness. All effort that produces no tangible personal benefit is so much wasted energy. You're not an Atlas, you can't carry the world on your shoulders. The whole scheme of nature was evolved for the benefit of individuals, not classes, or masses, or groups. The proof of the pudding is in the eating: I'm always happy, and the keenest source of my pleasure is in out-witting my fellow-men. Life is a perpetual game of skill, and like the integral calculus there are no rules. You're a mathematician, you like mathematics. I've seen you grubbing your snout into 'Salmon's Conic Sections' just on top of a Sunday's dinner. Why don't you step up with me into the higher planes of really applied mathematics; applied as all such things should be, to men and women? We'd have a rare time, you and I. When we boxed the other day we agreed at the start that we would slog; we started out to bump each other for all we were worth; we both got several severe punches; I got a split lip and you got a black eye, but we enjoyed it, didn't we?"
Carstairs sat down with a heavy plump into a chair. "You ought to be put in an asylum, not in prison," he said, wearily. "I wonder if I gave you a good hammering if it would do any good."
"Not a bit, old chap. Besides, I rather doubt your ability to do it."
"There's an element of uncertainty," Carstairs admitted.
They regarded each other with measuring eyes. Carstairs allowed his gaze to roam slowly over the thick, clean neck, the well-developed, lissom-looking shoulders, and last of all rested on the clean-cut, patrician face with the small, neat moustache just shading the well-moulded, full red lips, quite closed; and the brilliant, clear eyes that sparkled with a bold, clear intelligence. They were two splendid animals, these two young men, spotlessly clean, well groomed.