The players were giving Patmore only divided attention. They had heard such proclamations before, and no particular example of any of Pat’s special excellences could be expected wholly to detract them from their game. But at this moment the dealer, who was still standing, caught sight of Shine looming in the doorway; and the dealer became fixed as suddenly as a figure in a cinema when the projector abruptly stops; fixed in the act of dealing, with his thumb at his lip and the deck in his hand, his eyes wide, set, unmoving.
All the men turned and looked. What they saw affected them differently. The dealer, now like an actor in a slow motion picture, his eyes still set on Shine, put the deck down on the table, gathered up the bank without looking at it, and retreated toward the far door of the room, which led into the saloon. Those nearest him seized their piles and moved in the same direction, as if the dealer were attached to them, drawing them along by strings. The lopsided waiter backed terrified against the wall and stood there as if stuck, while the plump cocoa porter, his eyes on Shine, clawed absently and futilely at the place on the blanket where his pile should have been, and made no effort to rise. Some pushed back their chairs and yet seemed too fascinated to get out of them, some jumped up and elbowed their way through the midst of their slowly retreating comrades, while a few sat quite still as if aware that the effort to get clear of danger was useless. All this because of what even the blindest of them saw in the face of Shine.
Not slowly, first with doubt, then with mounting conviction, had revelation come to Shine this time; not as in the case of the ruined house, nor of the sobbing Merrit, nor of Linda’s analysis of his hardness. Not so, but instantaneously, like something revealed by lightning in the dark—the moment he heard Patmore’s words he knew all of what had happened; knew who had craftily sent Merrit that fake warning the day before the lawyer moved in; knew who had thus established an alibi, awaiting an opportune moment to strike safely when suspicion would fall elsewhere. Knew who, finding Linda alone, had renewed the advances which had been interrupted at the Manhattan Casino dance; knew all Pat’s motives and all his moves, from the unsuccessful attempt months ago to enlist his own aid as an “agent” to this last vicious spiteful snap at him himself, through Linda. And it seemed that all the hatred he had ever felt for anybody welled up within him to be concentrated now on Henry Patmore alone: his hatred of the asylum superintendent, of the fay who had called him Shine, of all fays, of the evil thing he’d escaped in pianos, of dickties in general and the blameless dickty Merrit in particular—all these now gathered in one single wave, advanced in one tidal onrush. And all that he knew and felt gleamed in his bronze face.
Patmore saw it there and confessed everything by reaching for his gun. Jinx, one of those who had not moved from his seat at the table, was near enough to strike at Pat’s arm as the weapon went off. Shine felt his left hand go numb, felt his hatred break into action. All of a sudden he became a madman with no notion of what he was doing, with no sustained consciousness, only a succession of fragments that thumped in his head.
Linda resting comfortably. Merrit crying like a baby. Picture of his mother. Fays sure got him. Fays? Fays hell—Patmore got ’im. Wonder how many kinds of a jackass that guy thinks I am—? Never seen a man catch air so fast. Walls tumblin’—damn if they ain’t. Offered me twenty-five dollars—no—Linda. Fly guy, passing for white. Assault with intent—not Merrit—Patmore. Patmore done it—did it. Not the fays—Patmore. Patmore put it on Merrit. Like this—Walls—haw!—damn right, walls—look at ’em fall—let ’em raise hell when they fall—like that Goddamn piano—
From the saloon room a few observers, some of them those who’d escaped the game room but had in intention of sacrificing the spectacle of a good fight, watched the tumult grow. The game room door had been shut tight behind them, but the wide passage between the saloon and the pool parlor revealed a part view of the latter; and presently forms came into sight, were framed in the doorway, vanished, returned for brief moments. The field of vision was maddeningly small, but it showed that more men than Pat and Shine had become involved in the battle. Those who watched could not know that when Jinx had knocked Pat’s gun out of line, an adjacent friend of Pat’s had seized Jinx and retaliatively yanked him back; that Bubber had cheerfully kicked the shins of another interferer who would otherwise have tripped Shine at his first move; an interferer who resented interference and so promptly turned on Bubber; that from such small beginnings the conflict had grown to a come-one-come-all fracas, and that Jinx and Bubber were gleefully trouncing some of those who would have enjoyed seeing them trounce each other not long since.
Unintelligible, fragmentary glimpses came through the too narrow doorway—Bubber ducking a cue stick, swung butt-end-to in a villainous arc—somebody reaching for a pool ball in a corner of the one visible table—a figure pitching forward headlong out of sight—Jinx with a pianohold, vehemently bending his particular adversary back across the edge of the table—wild swings of bodiless arms, senseless twist and tangle of disjointed legs and feet. Accompanying these glimpses, noise, a strident yet muffled tumult: shuffle of feet, grunts, curses, thumps, thwacks, hisses, stifled cries; a deep background of sound against which stood out an occasional wooden crash.
And now there swept into the doorway, framed as if by stage design, that pair of antagonists from
