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Then Brundage, with long, unhurried step, crossed to the desk and threw down a package of papers as he said in dry, hard tones: "Tom, you're a damned old skinflint. Seibert says he'll pay, just to be neighbourly, but if he'd known this was the way you were going to treat him he'd never have come near you. He won't any more, ever. He said so."

Williams said nothing. He was grim, silent, alert, waiting to go. Combe stood tremulously—the lamp was behind him—looking from Brundage to Williams, trying to say something, wanting to offer something, to give up something; but there was nothing that he could offer, and little that he could say, for his was not a glib tongue.

With an air of putting himself out of the scene, Brundage sat down in the chair by the desk, stretched out his long legs, leaned back, and, scratching his leathery chin, looked with a glint of amusement at Combe's troubled awkwardness.

He took two or three aimless steps forward. His stoopshouldered silhouette was blotted against the lamplight, so that the agitated old fellow appeared grotesque.