Nevertheless, he had never pretended to understand that influence; and this man's was not quite the same, it seemed reversed, although to save his life Quorn could not have explained the difference. Black magic was the thought that came into his mind. His head felt woozy, and he knew that was only partly due to the blow, only partly due to the drug he still tasted; there was still something else that he felt he could fight and overcome. "Understand me," said the man, and he spoke English with only a trace of accent, "you are physically at my mercy--absolutely. I can kill you slowly or quickly, however I please, in my own time, in my own way, for my own pleasure. Sit up. I will show you something else." * * * * * He seized Quorn's shoulders and raised him until he sat with his back propped in the corner of a wall. His strength appeared to be prodigious; it produced in its victim a sense of helplessness that had nothing to do with the cords around wrists and ankles. It was like the strength of machinery. "There is a fool here," he said, "who has wearied me." Quorn discovered it was painful to turn his head; however, he managed it, and decided he had not been badly hurt. He was in a small square room with whitewashed walls. The only furniture was heaps of gunnysacks, that looked rat eaten, and a small glass lamp on an upturned packing case. Another man sat on a heap of sacks, whom Quorn recognized at the first glance as the individual used by the temple Brahmins as go-between, whenever they had business with persons with whom their caste forbade them to associate--a man in a long yellow robe with a variation from the Brahmin caste-mark on his forehead--a sort of bastard Brahmin, a metaphysical eunuch, authorized to touch defilement in the name of holiness without infecting his masters. "You shall watch him die." As if he had been shot out of a catapult the other man made headlong for the door. But the door was locked. "You would escape from Maraj? In what way are you more clever than all those others? Come here." His panic-stricken effort having failed, the man seemed paralyzed by fear. He turned ashen gray, trembled, unable to speak. The man who had called himself Maraj reached out with his right hand, seized him by the ankle, twisted it, drew him forward, changed his hold to the shoulder and hurled him back on the heap of sacking--all with one hand and without much noticeable effort. "I will not kill him. He shall kill himself." At those words the man found speech at last. He jabbered, stuttered, threatened, pleaded--until his voice died to a meaningless mumble and his jaw fell. Then Quorn spoke for the first time: "Out with the light, you idiot!" The advice came too late. The Brahmin did make a move toward the lamp, but the other man seized his ankle and twisted it again until he screamed and struggled like a landed fish. Maraj then put the lamp up on a beam; he had to stand on the box to do it.