"A fanciful tale," said Riever. "All the killing poisons I ever heard of have to be introduced into the stomach, the blood or the lungs."
He spoke as one who knows, and Pen, wondering, pursued the subject with further questions. It was like tapping a hidden spring in the man. With a curious relish he described the action of various poisons on the human system.
"Cyanide is the neatest," he said. "There's your hammer-stroke."
Pen thought: "Has he tried that too? ... Collis Dongan was shot!"
She betrayed nothing in her face, but Riever suddenly, with an uneasy glance, was impelled to explain how he came by so much knowledge. "You see my hobby is raising fruit," he said. "My peaches have scores of enemies; suckers, chewers, fungi and bacilli. I have to study to keep ahead of them."
But he had been talking of the human system!
She couldn't appear to pin him down of course. She had to let him range where he would, contenting herself with giving the talk a little push this way or that when the opportunity offered. She encouraged him to talk of his childhood and youth, to which he was nothing loath. He unconsciously drew her a picture of a willful, jealous, destructive boy, a little monument of selfishness. There was a bad crack in his nature. He hated beauty, moral and physical, but particularly physical beauty. Pen marked the pained sneer with which his eyes followed the stalwart young steward who carried away the cups. Riever had to have handsome servants to maintain his position, but their comeliness was a perpetual reproach to him. No wonder he had hated Don Counsell from the first, Pen thought. She guessed darkly that Riever was the kind that pursues beautiful women only to hurt them.
He had been telling her with a laugh of the torments to which new boys were subjected in the fashionable school he had attended. One poor little wretch it appeared had been driven by his persecutors to the point of attempting suicide.
"No!" he said. "I had to go through the mill when I came. It wasn't my fault that this kid had a soft streak in him. Besides conscience is only another name for weak-mindedness. I made up my mind early that I'd never be sorry for anything I did. A strong man laughs at conscience."