“Well, I’m not going to tell you that. But we can do a lot. You know that yourself, don’t you? You have your choice in the matter. You either tell me or I’ll go to the trouble of telling you and the court myself.” He paused for an instant and then added: “with the help of Bartly Mulholland here.” Then he stared at Gypo dispassionately, with the cold and indifferent look of a man examining a statue. Gypo’s chest heaved in and out. He had not been prepared for this point-blank attack from Gallagher. He had expected that Gallagher would adopt his usual tactics of friendliness and cajolery, trusting to madden his prey into letting some choice important word slip unawares from his lips. Gypo felt himself actually cheated out of his rights by this insultingly crude and insolent attack. Gallagher was not even doing him the honour of playing with him. Then he must know everything already. Did he? The last trace of his self-control left Gypo. He abandoned himself to a frenzy of passion. A delirious wave of ferocity mastered him. He clenched his fists so that the bones cracked. His right leg went so rigid that the boot rushed along the stone floor with a harsh scraping sound, until it brought up with a bang against the leg of the form. There it stayed. His knee was pointed and shivering. He opened his mouth and yelled, almost incoherently, a torrent of blasphemous and obscene oaths at Gallagher. He yelled them in an endless sentence, without a verb or pronoun or conjunction. He kept yelling until he had to stop for breath. When Gypo stopped, Mary McPhillip’s sobs became audible. She was trembling violently and sobbing. Gallagher got up, walked past Gypo without taking the slightest notice of him and took Mary by the arm. He led her up to the judge’s table. “I have no further need of this witness,” he said, “so I suppose I may take her into another room.” The judges nodded. He led Mary out of the room. Gypo’s eyes followed him everywhere. He was staring wildly and he seemed to have lost all power of directing his bodily activities. He was shivering spasmodically in his legs. Gallagher came back into the room and sat down at his table. Still Gypo’s eyes were concentrated on Gallagher’s face. His outburst had left him completely empty, like a shaken sack. There was a pain at the pit of the stomach. Mob orators know that pain, when they have spoken for over an hour under a perfect hail of frenzied interruptions. His eyes were dazed. Some machinal force kept his eyes concentrated on Gallagher’s face. He responded to every movement of Gallagher’s face in a half-conscious way. Every time Gallagher moved a limb he felt a sharp stab in the pit of the stomach. He was conscious of even the most minute movements. A thing that terrified him especially was Gallagher’s chronic habit of twitching his cheeks by grinding his back teeth at intervals.