“Well, now that’s a pity,” said Gallagher. “For it’s very important for us to find out what that time was. If we were able to find out what time that was, then we would surely be able to find out lots more. Let us say it was nine o’clock at that time. Let us say nine. That wouldn’t be far out? Would it be far out, Gypo?” “How do I know what time it was?” roared Gypo. “Amn’t I tellin’ ye that I was drunk?” “Well, now,” continued Gallagher, getting a little more excited, “we have got as far as nine o’clock. We are as far back as nine o’clock.” He paused. His face began to light up and his forehead began to wrinkle. His eyes were no longer steely and cold. They became restless points, fiery and full of turbulent activity. They kept roaming over Gypo’s face. His lips, on the contrary, were creased at the corners in a strange, dry smile. His voice was laughing and at a slightly higher and sweeter pitch. “Now we have arrived at nine o’clock,” he continued, “travelling backwards. Great way this for travelling, Gypo. You never know what you are going to bump against without knowing. Any minute now we are liable to find something, Gypo. We might in a few moments, even jump on the man that informed on Frankie McPhillip. _We might jump on him._ Now! Easy there, Gypo. I mean the man you saw tracking Frankie McPhillip out of the Dunboy Lodging House. Could you give the court any idea of the description of that man you saw? You say he was like Mulligan? Do you say he was like Mulligan? Speak, man. _Speak, I say_,” he roared. But Gypo was no longer able to speak. A sudden transformation had come over him. As a thunder-storm bursts over a calm sea on a sultry day, rending the oily ocean back and covering it with cavorting, black ridges and white, churning froth, so his body and soul responded to the sudden lightning in Gallagher’s eyes and the ominous crackle of his voice, uttering sugared threats, gambolling devilishly with words. He crumbled away into an immense, flabby, supine mass, that writhed on the wooden form, a tangled heap of limbs lying piled helplessly. His head dropped forward on his chest, swaying from side to side on the pivot of his chin. His eyes sank into their sockets. His face went ashen and still. His legs became lax. His stomach wrinkled up like an unpropped wall collapsing on its own foundations. His whole body shivered and started into awe-inspiring movement, monstrous and inhuman, revolting as a spectacle of degrading vice and yet pitiful in its helplessness. All the countless centuries of human development that had left their impression on that body, to make it into the glorious image of a God-like human being, withered away during that time of agony, leaving only a chaotic collection of limbs writhing and strange visions racing over his convulsing features.