"You imply nevertheless that he had enemies. Could you not tell us a little more?"
Pfyfe passed his hand gracefully over the tips of his golden moustache, and then permitted his index-finger to linger on his cheek in an attitude of meditative indecision.
"Your request, Mr. Markham,"—he spoke with pained reluctance—"brings up a matter which I hesitate to discuss. But perhaps it is best that I confide in you—as one gentleman to another. Alvin, in common with many other admirable fellows, had a—what shall I say?—a weakness—let me put it that way—for the fair sex."
He looked at Markham, seeking approbation for his extreme tact in stating an indelicate truth.
"You understand," he continued, in answer to the other's sympathetic nod, "Alvin was not a man who possessed the personal characteristics that women hold attractive." (I somehow got the impression that Pfyfe considered himself as differing radically from Benson in this respect.) "Alvin was aware of his physical deficiency, and the result was,—I trust you will understand my hesitancy in mentioning this distressing fact,—but the result was that Alvin used certain—ah—methods in his dealings with women, which you and I could never bring ourselves to adopt. Indeed—though it pains me to say it—he often took unfair advantage of women. He used underhand methods, as it were."
He paused, apparently shocked by this heinous imperfection of his friend, and by the necessity of his own seemingly disloyal revelation.
"Was it one of these women whom Benson had
