Page:Rowland--The closing net.djvu/331

Rh awful reflection of their tortures. I could not bring myself to thrust a knife into a man. I support a charity at Berck for children whose spines and hips are full of pain. I have watched these little doomed children—one was my own—and the tears have been wrung from my eyes; so you see I am really very weak. As criminals, as thieves, we are crass failures, simply because we are often kind; and, let me tell you, my fellow-failures, there is no such silly thing as a kind-hearted thief. Call it what you will—theft, brigandage, graft—whatever is dishonest is cruel and selfish and has no place with generous traits. To steal, to trick a man, to take what belongs to another person, is mean just mean, and there is no getting round it. From the mythical Robin Hood to our modern Arsene Lupin, the thief and his jackal, the swindler, have been glorified and admired; but there is no getting round the fact that they are mean. A dog that behaved in a similar way would be shot; and, though romance often surrounds the thief with a false glamour, it will be found that where he steals a thousand francs he gives about five in charity, and the giving of that five writes him as a failure."

Ivan sipped his Chablis. "We are failures, the three of us," said he. "There is no good in us. We are not even good thieves. Chu-Chu has us beaten. He is a consistent criminal—ruthless, selfish, cruel. If he could murder all the world and be left alone to enjoy their goods and lick his lips in fat plenty, his success would be complete. He is a tearer-down, a destroyer of the established social balance. A man like myself, on the contrary, who