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 Pokorny 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 

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