Moropulos wrinkled his nose like an angry dog. His beard seemed to stiffen and his eyes blazed. "Like him--he's not human, that fellow! Nothing moves him, nothing. I tried to smash him up with a bottle, but he took it away from me as if I were a child. I hate a man who makes me feel like that--if he hadn't got my gun away I'd have laid him out. It would be fine to hurt the devil--and he is a devil, Steppe. Inhuman. Sometimes I give him a newspaper to read--just for the fun of it. But it never worries him." "Don't try. He's a bigger man than you. You want to rouse him, huh? The day you do, God help you! I don't think you will. That's how I feel about him. He's cold. Chilly as a Druid's hell. He is dangerous when he's quiet--and he's always quiet." "He is no use to me. It is a waste of money keeping him. I'll give you no more trouble." Steppe pursed his lips until his curling black moustache bristled like the end of a brush. It was a grimace indicative of his skepticism. He had reason. "Leave it. Sault will not give you any bother. I don't want strangers here, huh? Cleaners who are spying detectives." Moropulos took his book again as his employer went out. But he did not read. His eyes looked beyond the edge of the page, his mind was busy. Detestation of Ambrose Sault was not assumed, as he had simulated so many likes and dislikes. Sault's maddening imperturbability, his immense superiority to the petty annoyances with which his daily companion fed him, his contempt for the Greek's vulgarity, these things combined to the fire of the man's hatred. They were incompatibles--it was impossible to imagine any two men more unlike. Moropulos was one whose speech was habitually coarse; his pleasures fleshly and elemental. He delighted to talk of his conquests, cheap enough though they were. He had collected from the Levant the pictures that hawkers and dragomen show secretly, and these were bound up in two huge volumes over which he would pore for hours. So it pleased him, beyond normal understanding, to bring Beryl Merville into the category of easy women. He had never doubted that she was bad. There were no other kind of women to Moropulos. Suspecting, before there were grounds for suspicion, he had watched and justified his construction of the girl's friendship with Ronnie Morelle. He was certain when he watched her come out of the Knightsbridge flat that if he had been fortunate, he would have seen her there before, perhaps the previous night. Beryl was no less in his eyes than she had been. She was bad. All women were bad, only some were more particular than others in choosing their partners in sin. He had reason to meet Ronald Morelle the next morning and returning he brought news. Ambrose was clearing the snow from the steps and path before the house when he arrived.