Brodie got up, lowering, his rage like that of an angry bull. "Will you get out, you young swine?" he said thickly, "or will I smash you?" He advanced towards the other heavily. In a second Denis could have been out of the office, but a hidden antagonism had been aroused in him by Brodie's insults and, although he knew he ought to go for Mary's sake, nevertheless he remained. Confident that he
could take care of himself, he was not afraid of the other's lumbering strength and he realised, too, that if he went now, Brodie would think lie had driven him out like a beaten dog. In a voice suffused by resentment he exclaimed:
"Don't touch me! I've suffered your insults, but don't go any further!"
At these words Brodie's anger swelled within him until it almost choked him.
"Will I not, though," he cried, his breath coming in quick noisy gusts. "I've got ye like a rat in a trap and I'll smash ye like a rat."
With a heavy ferocious stealth he advanced slowly towards the other, carefully manoeuvred his towering bulk near to him; then, when he was within a yard of Denis, so near that he knew it was impossible for him to escape, his lips drew back balef ully upon his gums, and suddenly he raised his mammoth fist and hurled it with crushing force full at young Foyle's head. A sharp, hard, brittle crack split the air. There had been no head for him to hit; quicker than a lightning flash, Foyle had slipped to one side and Brodie's hand struck the
stone wall with all the power of a sledge hammer. His right arm dropped inertly to his side; his wrist was broken. Denis, looking at him with his hand on the door knob, said quietly:
"I'm sorry, Mr. Brodie. You see that after all there are some things you do not understand. I warned you not to try anything like that."
Then he was gone, and not a moment too soon. The heavy, mahogany, revolving chair, thrown across the room by Brodie's left arm like a shot from a catapult, crashed against the light door and shivered the glass and framework to atoms.
Brodie stood, with heaving nostrils and dangling arm, staring stupidly at the wreckage. He felt conscious of no pain in his injured arm, only an inability to move it, but his swelling breast was like to burst with defeated fury. The fact that this young pup above every one had bearded him, and gotten away with it, made him writhe with wounded pride; the physical hurt was nothing, but the damage to his pride was deadly.
The fingers of his left hand clenched convulsively. Another minute, he was certain, he would have cornered and broken him. But to have been outdone without so much as a blow having been struck against him! Only a faint remnant of self-control and a glimmering of sense prevented him from running blindly into the street after Foyle, in an effort to overtake and crush him. It was the first time in his life that any one had dared to get the upper hand of him, and he ground his teeth to think that he had been outfaced and outwitted by the effron-
tery of such a low-born upstart.
"By God!" he shouted to the empty room, "I'll make him pay for it."
Then he looked down at his useless hand and forearm which had already become blue and swollen. He realised that he must have the condition seen to and also that he must invent some story to explain it some balderdash about having slipped on the stairs, he thought. Sullenly he went out of the shop, banged shut the front door, locked it, and went off.
Meanwhile it had dawned upon Denis, since his departure, that by his rash action he had done incalculable harm to Mary and himself. Before the interview he had imagined that he might ingratiate himself with her father and so obtain his consent to see her. This, he had assumed, would make it easy for them to arrange the events towards a definite plan of escape. Indeed, he had fondly estimated that Brodie might view him with less disapproval, might even conceive some slight regard for him. To have succeeded in his project would undoubtedly have expedited the course of such sudden steps as they might later be obliged to take, would also have tempered the shock of the subsequent and inevitable disclosure.
He had not then known Brodie. He had frequently considered Mary's delineation of him, but had imagined that her account was perhaps tinged with filial awe or that her sensitive nature magnified the stature of his odious propensities. Now he fully understood her terror of Brodie, felt her remarks to have erred on the side of leniency towards him. He had a few moments ago seen him in a condition
of such unbalanced animosity that he began to fear for Mary's safety; he cursed himself repeatedly for his recent imprudent action.
He was completely at a loss as to what step to take next, when suddenly, as he passed a stationer's shop in the High Street, it occurred to him that he might write her a letter, asking her to meet him on the following day. He entered the shop and bought a sheet of notepaper and an envelope. Despite his anxiety his power of blandishment remained, and he wheedled the old lady behind the counter to sell him a stamp and to lend him pen and ink. This she did willingly, with a
maternal smile, and whilst he wrote a short note to Mary, she watched him solicitously out of the corner of her eye. When he had finished he thanked her gracefully and outside, was about to drop the letter in the pillar box when a thought struck him and he withdrew his hand as if it had been stung. He turned slowly round to the kerb and then after a moment, at the confirmation of his thought, he tore the letter into small pieces and scattered them in the gutter. He had suddenly realised that if, by chance, this communication were intercepted, Brodie would immediately apprehend that he had wilfully deceived
him, that Mary had been meeting him continually and clandestinely. He had made one serious mistake that day and he was determined not to commit another. Buttoning up his jacket tightly, he plunged his hands in his pockets and, with his chin thrust pugnaciously forwards, he walked quickly away. He had decided to reconnoitre the neighbourhood of the Brodie's house.
Unfamiliar with the locality, he became slightly out of his reckoning in the outskirts of the town, but, by means of his general sense of direction, he made a series of detours and at length arrived within sight of Mary's home. Actually he had never seen this house before, and now, as he surveyed it, a feeling of consternation invaded him.
It seemed to him more fitted for a prison than a home and as inappropriate for the housing of Mary's soft gentleness as a dark, confined vault might be for a dove. The squat, grey walls seemed to enclose her with an irrevocable clasp, the steep-angled ramparts implied her subjection, the deep, embrasured windows proclaimed her detention under a constrained duress.
As he surveyed the house, he murmured to himself, "I'll be glad to take her away from there and she'll be glad to come. That man's not right! His mind is twisted somewhere. That house is like him, somehow!"
With his mind still clouded by apprehension, he wormed himself into a hollow in the hedgerow behind him, sat down on the bank, lit a cigarette, and began to turn over certain projects in his mind. Faced with the imperative necessity of seeing Mary, he began to review mentally a series of impossible plans and incautious designs of achieving the object. He was afraid of making another imprudent blunder, and yet he felt that he must see her at once, or the opportunity would be for ever lost. His cigarette was almost burned out when suddenly the stern look vanished from his face and he smiled audaciously at
the obvious simplicity of the excellent expedient which had struck him. Nothing was to prevent him now, in open daylight, from advancing boldly and knocking upon the front door. Mary would almost assuredly open the door herself, whereupon he would sign immediately for silence and, after delivering a note into her own hands, leave us urbanely and openly as he had come. He knew enough of the household to understand that, with Brodie at business and little Nessie at school, the only other person who might answer the door would be Mrs. Brodie. If this latter contingency occurred, she did not know him, Brodie would not yet have warned her against him, and he would merely enquire for some fictitious name and make a speedy and apologetic departure.