He woke once from his daze of chopping and prying to find Polly Chesbro pulling on him. "They're stealing everything, Mickey," she said insistently. "Can't you stop them?" Groff looked around. The store was gutted, the fire only an evil smoulder here and there. He coughed and walked out, sidling around the twisted, blackened little car with the bashed-in tail. He breathed fresh air outside; to his surprise it was late afternoon. The pile of clothes from the store was dwindling before his eyes. People were picking it over and grabbing; Mrs. Goudeket was screaming at them: "Leave the man's stock alone! I'll--I'll--" She took an axe and made a feeble pass at a man in mechanic's coveralls. He shoved her hard and sent her sprawling. Polly Chesbro began to curse the man fluently; he ignored her as if she were a buzzing fly. Groff went and picked up the gasping old woman. "You hurt?" he asked. She rubbed her behind and shook her head, glaring murderously. "Loafers," she said. "Bums without brains to run a business themselves. Look at them!" Groff looked at them. From the wrong side of the tracks--river in this town. Sick, neurotic faces, shrill neurotic voices as they squabbled over tidbits like carrion crows. Feeble slum types, most of them, but a few of the gorillas that every slum produces in defiance of malnutrition. Men, women and gorillas, there were about a dozen of them. This was his cue to deliver a ringing oration on the rights of property and shame them away from the only chance most of them would ever have at an eighty-five dollar suit or topcoat. He took up Mrs. Goudeket's axe and walked purposefully toward the carrion crows. "Break it up!" he yelled hoarsely. "If you can't do anything useful you can go home and not make any more trouble." The gorilla who had shoved Mrs. Goudeket looked at him appraisingly, picked up the bundle of clothes he had neatly laid aside and walked off with them in his arms. There was a nice charcoal-gray single-breasted suit on top. "Put those down!" Groff snarled. The man just kept walking. There was a crackle of laughter from the others around the pile. Where were the decent people, Groff wondered angrily. They were on the fringes and they were waiting. Their world was balanced on a razor's edge, and they dared not breathe. Let it tip one way and looting would tilt again to law and order; let it tip the other and looting would tilt over into murder. Groff balanced the doubled-bitted axe in his right hand and hurled it at the departing gorilla. It flew like an arrow; its flat top thudded into the small of the man's back. He fell, howling, on the soft bundle of clothes he embraced. Groff walked up to him and rolled him over with his foot. The man cursed him and Groff drew back his foot for a kick at his bullet head. The man stopped instantly, glaring. "Go home," Groff told him.