“Who’s this? Speak!” shouted Shinsuké, as he strove to steady his tottering feet for a quick run.
“Drunken slob that you can’t know my voice!” retorted the other. “For our Boss, I must have your head, and I’ve brought you here to get it.” The assailant leapt forth to pursue and pounce upon his victim, guided by his voice.
Shinsuké pushed his back against the plastered wall on a house premise, and whirled round the handle of his umbrella in frantic defence. Twice or so he trounced off the other who, however, quickly managed to close in and drive a thrust into his flesh—somewhere in the lower part of his body. Having pinned him fast by grasping him by the bosom, the man came on cutting him up, and his blows, though not well aimed, were none the less furious. After that, neither one of them knew how it fared. They groaned and roared like two beasts pitted against each other, and filthy invectives were hurled back and forth, as their deadly struggle went on in dirt and water. Shinsuké brought his whole weight to bear upon his two hands as he wrenched the opponent’s right hand to force the weapon out of his clutch. They again clinched, and again parted only to close in yet once again in desperate fury and in all that it detailed, the while Shinsuké began to feel within him such a stock of prowess as he had never imagined himself capable of. Santa who was in a worse condition from drinks began at length to lose his ground before the stronger power of sinew, until his sword was at last wrested out of his hand. Undaunted still, he hurled himself against Shinsuké. As quickly almost, he threw Santa down, rode astride his body, drove the blade through the scalp, sawed and grated therewith against the bone, even as the rat gnawed at its bone. The man was dead, quickly.
Then, Shinsuké could understand neither wherefore he had killed nor whereby he had been driven to all this atrocity. He had been goaded into a desperate decision that there was to be no escape save by killing the man; and kill him he did, as in a half dream;—that was about as far as he could make it out for himself. Apart from the shock to his nerves, he still felt in himself, despite several wounds suffered, the presence of so much animal force that he marveled, “How easy a work it was to kill a man!”
What claimed his attention next, was the question whether he should run away or surrender himself to the law. In any event, it would not be too late, he concluded, if he went first to see his Tsuya, before he made up his mind one way or the other. The sight of the body of the man who had been capable of laughter, anger and fight till a moment ago, now but a lump of flesh, lying there like a log, so suddenly speechless as almost to appear ludicrous. He felt about the body with his toes, and his sensation of dread was not unmingled with a sense of amused mockery. Somehow, he seemed to see what was called as human in the imagery of a mechanism contrived with extreme ingenuity—and with a sense of humour. To prevent the discovery of any clues for the time being, he threw the corpse and the weapon into the river. In the rain that kept up with unabated vigour, he started off, at a run, for the boatman’s home at Takabashi.
“For our Boss I must have your head”:—these words of Santa were recalled. It was easy to see now that Seiji was anything but what he had believed him to be, and that his place must be nothing but a den of blackguards working behind the mask of the boatman. It was as easy to see that Seiji had the attempt made upon his life, because he wished to work his own game with Tsuya. Seeing that the boatman excused himself from the party on the pretext of going to Koume, it was possible that something had befallen Tsuya, already. If the entire household should be involved in the conspiracy, the absence of Seiji from home would be no reason for him to sail into the place without due precaution. In any case, Shinsuké thought, it would not be so simple to see Tsuya. The longer his mind lingered on the subject, the more bitterly vexed was he with himself for allowing himself so neatly to be caught in their trap; and vexed and bitter he grew until a fierce hatred for the boatman and a passion for vengeance burst upon him.
“Kill a man, kill two—what’s the difference? If necessary, I’ll strike to death that dog of the boatman. And right then and there I’ll dispatch myself for justice!” In some moments of desperation, he thought it out as far as his own end; yet, live he would at all costs until he should see Tsuya of his devoted heart. And what if he should see her never more? Before the sadness of such a thought, the passion against the boatman seemed to fade out of his heart only to be filled with a painful sense of misery and desolation that was unbearable and overwhelming.
In order to make his visit as quiet as possible, he began to steal his way from four or five yards before the house. Making his way into the narrow passage flanking the house, he put his ear
