truth. But the matter can only be referred to clandestinely;
they are gazed at with awe or curiosity, mute witnesses to their
own achievement. Some years ago James Payn, the novelist,
hazarded the reckoning that one person in every five hundred was
an undiscovered murderer. This gives us all a hope, almost a
certainty, that we may reckon one such person at least among our
acquaintances.[1]


[1] The author was one of three men discussing this subject in a
London club. They were able to name six persons of their various
acquaintance who were, or had been, suspected of being successful
murderers.


Derues is remarkable for the extent of his social ambition,
the daring and impudent character of his attempts to gratify it,
the skill, the consummate hypocrisy with which he played on the
credulity of honest folk, and his flagrant employment of that
weapon known and recognised to-day in the most exalted spheres by
the expressive name of "bluff." He is remarkable, too, for his
mirth and high spirits, his genial buffoonery; the merry murderer
is a rare bird.

Professor Webster belongs to that order of criminal of which
Eugene Aram and the Rev. John Selby Watson are our English
examples, men of culture and studious habits who suddenly burst
on the astonished gaze of their fellowmen as murderers. The
exact process of mind by which these hitherto harmless citizens
are converted into assassins is to a great extent hidden from us.