"Oughtn’t we to do something?"

"Yis, me son," whispered Costigan. "We ought to sit still and learn a
thing or two."

The fat man cleaned his plate with a crust of bread stuck on the point of
a knife. There was nothing more to eat in the way of substantials, and he
debated pouring a little more of the sauce on his plate and mopping it
with a bit of bread still uneaten. Considering the pro and con of this
extra tid-bit, he glanced up and saw the gaunt man standing in the
doorway.

Simpson dropped the knife from his shaking hand and started up with a cry
that died away in a gurgle, an inhuman, nightmare croak. He looked about
wildly, like a rat in a trap, then backed towards the wall. The men about
the table got up, then cleared away in a circle, leaving the fat man. It
was all like a dream to the college boy, who had never seen a thing of the
kind before and could not realize now that it was happening. Rodney
advanced, never once relaxing the look in which he seemed to hold his
enemy as in a vise. Simpson was like a man bewitched. Once, twice, he made
a grab for his revolver, but his right hand seemed to have lost power to
heed the bidding of his will. Rodney, now well towards the centre of the
room, waited, with a suggestion of ceremony, for Simpson to get his
six-shooter.

It was one of those moments in which time seems to have become petrified.
The limp-clad proprietress of the eating-house, made curious by the sudden
silence, looked in from the kitchen. Simpson, his eyes wandering like a
trapped rat, saw, and called, through teeth that chattered in an ague of
fear, "Ree—memm—her thth—there’s la—dies p—present! For Gawd’s sake,