"Liar! Liar!" he reiterated over and over, standing and towering over the spilling bag. "Why did you lie to me about that box? Three years ago I asked you for it. The spring after her death. Just before the auction. Wasn't it sufficient that I let you and Pauline settle her personal effects between you? Only that little box--somehow I wanted it. Father gave it to her the first Christmas of their marriage. She always kept it on her table. You were welcome to all the rest between you. All I asked for was that little box of mother's. And to think that yesterday, the anniversary of her death, I mentioned it again. Liar! Liar! Lost! Never been found among her effects! Bah! Liar! It's a little thing, a trinket that she loved, but I wanted it. You hear, I wanted that trinket. She used to keep jelly beans in it for me when I came in from school. It's little--the littlest thing that ever happened between us, but it's the meanest, and God knows in my dealings with you all my life there have been enough of the little meannesses to contend with. But you have won your last mean little advantage outside this office. You and I can play the cards in business, particularly when we play them six hundred miles apart and where it is a case of man to man out on the mat. But outside this office we play quits! There aren't going to be any more nasty little personal issues with you, because there aren't going to be any at all. You're a liar and a hundred per cent bigger one over that little trinket of a box than if the stakes had been bigger. You hate to give, unless it's so much for so much. Your sense of fairness is vile! It's penny mean! Liar!" With a lowering of head Robert lunged then, his lips dragged to an oblique, threads of red cut in his eyeballs. "Eat those words or, by God! I'll ram them down your throat." "The hell I will." "Gentlemen!" They were crowded against the door, their breathing flowing against each other's face, gestures uplifted. Her eyes black and her notebook crushed up to her, Lilly's voice rang out like the crack of a whip, springing them apart. There were a whiteness and a sense of emptiness upon her and she wanted to crumple up rather sickly and cry, as if the blows had been diverted to her. They were suddenly and quiveringly themselves again, the panther laid. "You'll rue this," said Robert, walking back with some uncertainty of step to his desk, his eyes still slits. Bruce lifted the box rather tenderly, even with the greeny pallor of his rage still out and his features straining for composure. "I'll have it valued and send you a check--" "Damn you!" With snarl-shaped lips the older brother lunged again, this time their bodies meeting and swaying for clutch. "Bruce!"