Mr. Y. Quite so, but selling would probably be particularly risky.
Mr. X. Ah! ah! I should of course melt it all down and coin good golden ducats —full weight, of course.
Mr. Y. Of course.
Mr. X. You can quite understand that, if I were running a false mint, well, there’d be no need for me to dig up my gold. [Pause.] It’s remarkable, at all events, if another person were to do this, which I can’t reconcile myself to, why I should absolve him, but I can’t absolve myself. I could make a brilliant defence of the thief, prove that gold was res nullius, or nobody’s, that it came into the earth at a time when there was no such thing as property, that it shouldn’t by right belong to anybody else except the first-comer, since the contents of the earth existed a long time before landowners made their artificial laws of real property.
Mr. Y. And you would make your case all the more plausible if, as you say, the thief did not steal from want, but as a matter of collecting mania, as a matter of pure scholarship, because of his ambition to make a discovery. Isn’t that so?
Mr. X. You mean that I shouldn’t get him off if he had stolen out of want? No, that’s just the one case for which there is no excuse. That’s pure theft.
Mr. Y. And wouldn’t you excuse that?
Mr. X. How? Excuse? I couldn’t, for there are no excuses in law. But I must confess that I should find it hard to prosecute a collector for theft, because he made an archaeological discovery in somebody else’s ground which he didn’t have in his own collection.
Mr. Y. Then vanity and ambition are to serve as an excuse where want is no excuse?
Mr. X. And all the same want should be the valid, the only excuse. But it’s like this, I can’t alter, any more than I can alter my own will not to steal in any such case.
Mr. Y. You count it then, as a great merit of yours that you can’t—hm— steal.
Mr. X. It’s an irresistible something in my character, just as the craving to steal is something irresistible in other people, and therefore it’s no virtue. I cannot do it and he cannot refrain from doing it —you quite understand, my dear fellow? I covet this gold and want to possess it. Why don’t I take it, then? I can’t. It’s simply disability, and something lacking is scarcely a merit. That’s what it is. [Beats on the chest.]
[It has rained in streams outside in the country, and now and then the room becomes dark. The darkness is that of approaching thunder.]
Mr. Y. It’s awfully stuffy. I think we shall have thunder. [Mr. Y. rises and closes the door and windows.]
Mr. X. Are you frightened of thunder?
Mr. Y. One has to be careful. [Pause.]
Mr. X. You are a queer fellow. You spring yourself on me here a fortnight ago, introduce yourself as a Swedish American on an etymological journey for a museum.
Mr. Y. Don’t bother yourself about me.
Mr. X. That’s how you always go on when I get tired of talking about myself and want to show you some little attention. That’s perhaps why you’re so sympathetic to me, because you let me speak so much about myself. We became old friends in no time, you had no angles I could knock up against, no bristles to prick me with. It wasn’t just so much that your whole person was so full of a deference which only a highly refined man could manifest, you never made any row when you came home late, never made a noise when you got up in the morning; didn’t bother about trifles; caved in when there was any chance of a squabble—in a word, you were the ideal companion. But you were much too yielding, much too negative, much too silent, for me not to think about it in the long run—and you’re as funky and nervous as they’re made. That looks as though you had a shadow knocking about somewhere. I tell you what—when I sit here in front of the mirror, and look at your back, it’s as though I saw another man altogether. [Mr. Y. turns round and looks in the looking glass.] Yes; you can’t see yourself from the back. From the front view you look like a straight man going about to face his life with his head up, but the back view—no, I don’t want to be offensive —> but you look as though you carried some burden, as though you were flinching from some blow, and when I see the cross of your red braces on your shirt—then you look like one big brand, an export brand on a package.
Mr. Y. [Rises.] I think I shall suffocate, if the thunderstorm doesn’t break soon.
Mr. X. That’ll come in a minute, you just steady on. And then the nape of your neck. It looks as though there were another face there, but of another type than yours; you are so awfully small between the ears that I sometimes wonder what race you are. [It lightens.] That looks as though it had struck the inspector’s place.
Mr. Y. [Anxious.] The inspector’s place?
Mr. X. Yes, that’s what it looks like. But all this thunderstorm business doesn’t matter to us. Just you sit down and let’s have a chat, as you are leaving to-morrow. It’s a queer thing that you, with whom I became quite pally in almost no time, are one of those people whose faces I can’t call to mind when they aren’t there. When you’re out of doors, and I remember you, I think all the time of another friend of mine, who isn’t really like you, though at the same time there is a certain likeness.
Mr. Y. Who is it?
Mr. X. I won’t mention his name. However, I always used to feed at the same place many years ago, and I met then, over the hors d’ceuzres, a little blond man with pale, agonized eyes. He had an extraordinary power of being in the front of any crush without either pushing or being pushed; he could take a slice of bread from yards away even though he stood by the door; he always seemed happy to be with people, and when he found a friend he would follow him about with hysterical enthusiasm, embrace him and slap him on his back as though he hadn’t met a human being for years and years. If anyone trampled on him, it would be as though he begged his pardon for being in the way. During the two years I kept on seeing him I amused myself by guessing his profession and character, but I never asked him what he was, because I didn’t want to know, because my hobby would have gone bust as soon as I did. This man had the same characteristic as you—that of being nondescript. Sometimes I’d put him down as a grammar school usher, a subaltern, a chemist, a clerk of the peace, or one of the secret police, and he seemed, like you, to be made up of two heterogeneous pieces which fitted in front but not at the back.
One day it happened I read in the papers about a big check forgery by a well-known civil servant. I then knew that my nondescript friend had been the partner of the forger’s brother, and that his name was Stroman, and in that way I found out that the aforesaid Stroman had previously carried on business as a lending library, but that he was not a police court reporter on a big daily. But how could I establish any connection between the forgery, the police and his nondescript demeanor? I don’t know, but when I asked a friend if Stroman was punished he neither answered no nor yes; he simply didn’t know. [Pause.]
Mr. Y. Well? Was he punished?
Mr. X. No, he went scot-free. [Pause.]
Mr. Y. Don’t you think that may have been why the police had such a morbid fascination for him and why he was so frightened of knocking up against his fellow-men?
Mr. X. Yes.
Mr. Y. Do you still keep up with him?
Mr. X. No; and I don’t wish to. [Pause.] Would you have still kept up with him if he had been—convicted?