"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."