"S'bad," muttered Hugo Van Diest. "S'bad business. Must tink all the time and be worried by dese things. For God's sake you don't fidget. You tink all the suffering was wit you, but it was inside of me where the pain live." "Ha ha!" said Richard. "Discomfort is nutting. I haf before me the prospec' to be beat. It wass the torture to be beat. You know that." "Not yet." "Mus' be taught." "Ha ha!" said Richard again and banged the dish cover against the table implements of a foodless tray that had marked the hour of a meal time. "Don't fidget!" roared Van Diest, emitting a cloud of tobacco smoke. "Don't smoke!" Richard countered in the same tone. "I shmoke on purpose." "And I fidget on purpose." With a sweep of the hand he sent the tray with a crashing to the floor. "Ach! Ach! Ach!" cried Van Diest, and was almost choked with a violent attack of coughing. "I make you to speak! I make you to speak! What if I burn you with my cigar--what if I----" he stopped abruptly and dropped his voice almost to a whine. "You don't know how goot I make myself to you. I wass a very kind man. At my home I keep the birds." "Poor darlings," said Richard. "The canaries; and you look what I haf here. A portrait of my little granddaughter Sibelle. She sit on my knee the Sunday afternoon and listen to the tale of Hansell and Grethel. She call me Grandparkins." Richard swept the photograph aside with the back of his hand. "I'm not sitting on anyone's knee, Grandparkins," he said. A bright purple ran over Van Diest's features in blotches and streaks. He rose to his feet and held out a quivering forefinger. "You pay very heavy to make fun of my heart, Mister Barraclough. If you haf any senses at all you know that all mens wass the two mens--the home man and the business man--and the one hass nothing to do with the udter." "Leave it at that," said Richard. "I'm not feeling altogether at home just now." "That was your last word?" "My last word." "So!" said Van Diest. "So!" His eyebrows went up and down and he seemed lost in thought for a moment. Finally: "You go into the bedroom now please." He gave the order slowly and to Richard's hypersensitive ears it held a threat of real and imminent danger. It sounded as the burial service must sound to a man who stands upon a trap with a knotted cord around his throat. "No!" said Richard. "No!" "The bedroom." "No!" An impasse. They stood like duellists trying to read intention in each other's eyes.