Gypo bounded from the bed to the floor in one leap. He stood motionless, crouching forward, panting, with dilated nostrils. A sound came on the stairs outside the door. Somebody on the stairs said: “Hist!” Then utter silence. Gypo stood transfixed, still wet with the perspiration of his nightmare. Then he moved noiselessly to the fireplace and picked up the tongs. It slipped from his fingers as he rose and rattled to the stone hearth. He whirled about to the door with an oath. Simultaneously the door was flung wide with a bang. Three flashes of light came before his eyes from the doorway. As he rushed headlong towards them there was a deafening roar. Three men had fired together at him. Then there was chaos. As he dashed across the floor to the landing, he felt a sting like frost-bite in his thigh. Then he saw their terror-stricken, mad faces. He recognized two of them, Mulholland and Hackett. The third man was Curley. When he closed with them and felt his giant hands on the soft warm flesh of their bodies he breathed a sigh of satisfaction. Somebody fired again, unintentionally, in the struggling mass on the landing. It must have been Curley. For his thin voice screamed querulously after the explosion, “God have mercy on my soul!” Gypo smelt burning under his armpit as his head was bent down to mobilize his spine strength. Then the banister gave way with a crash of breaking wood. The four men went down, without a cry. Their fists thudded with dull sounds as they struck blindly at one another in the dark. They fell on the next landing. Gypo and Mulholland were on top. Mulholland had his right knee on Curley’s back. He was cool with the mania of death-terror. He bared his teeth and raised his pistol to fire into Gypo’s open mouth. But Gypo rammed him with his monstrous head. Mulholland was hurled backwards like a gymnast, head over heels, heels over head. He brought up on a black sheepskin carpet outside a tenement door in the far corner. He lay with his knees to his chin, perfectly quiet. The pistol shot splashed through the whitewashed woodwork of the ceiling. The pistol jingled to the floor. Gypo scraped around on his hands and knees in the darkness. He groped for the two men who lay beneath him. He felt their rumps, their backs, their thighs, in a wide sweep of his hands. Their bodies were lax and soft, like the carcasses of dead things. One of them sighed and turned over. Gypo rose to his feet. Without looking anywhere he rushed for the stairs and leaped down. Half-way down the last flight he paused and tried to think. But he drew his hand over his eyes and shook his head. “It’s no use. It’s no use,” he said aloud. There was a great din of disturbed people in the house above him. He reached the hallway. Through the open door he could see the street outside. The dawn had come. The air was grey, cold, empty and silent. He marched steadily to the door. His body was very cold. And his mind was dead. Cold and dead. Dead and cold.