“Little ruin!” repeated Sir Richmond. “No. There’s lots of life in the little beast yet.” He reflected. “She’ll have to be towed.” He felt in his breast pocket. “Somewhere I have the R.A.C. order paper, the Badge that will Get You Home. We shall have to hail some passing car to take it into Maidenhead.” Dr. Martineau offered and Sir Richmond took and lit a cigarette. For a little while conversation hung fire. Then for the first time Dr. Martineau heard his patient laugh. “Amazing savage,” said Sir Richmond. “Amazing savage!” He pointed to his handiwork. “The little car looks ruffled. Well it may.” He became grave again. “I suppose I ought to apologize.” Dr. Martineau weighed the situation. “As between doctor and patient,” he said. “No.” “Oh!” said Sir Richmond, turned to a new point of view. “But where the patient ends and the host begins.... I’m really very sorry.” He reverted to his original train of thought which had not concerned Dr. Martineau at all. “After all, the little car was only doing what she was made to do.” Section 2 The affair of the car effectively unsealed Sir Richmond’s mind. Hitherto Dr. Martineau had perceived the possibility and danger of a defensive silence or of a still more defensive irony; but now that Sir Richmond had once given himself away, he seemed prepared to give himself away to an unlimited extent. He embarked upon an apologetic discussion of the choleric temperament. He began as they stood waiting for the relief car from the Maidenhead garage. “You were talking of the ghosts of apes and monkeys that suddenly come out from the darkness of the subconscious....” “You mean--when we first met at Harley Street?” “That last apparition of mine seems to have been a gorilla at least.” The doctor became precise. “Gorillaesque. We are not descended from gorillas.” “Queer thing a fit of rage is!” “It’s one of nature’s cruder expedients. Crude, but I doubt if it is fundamental. There doesn’t seem to be rage in the vegetable world, and even among the animals--? No, it is not universal.” He ran his mind over classes and orders. “Wasps and bees certainly seem to rage, but if one comes to think, most of the invertebrata show very few signs of it.” “I’m not so sure,” said Sir Richmond. “I’ve never seen a snail in a towering passion or an oyster slamming its shell behind it. But these are sluggish things. Oysters sulk, which is after all a smouldering sort of rage. And take any more active invertebrate. Take a spider. Not a smashing and swearing sort of rage perhaps, but a disciplined, cold-blooded malignity. Crabs fight. A conger eel in a boat will rage dangerously.” “A vertebrate. Yes. But even among the vertebrata; who has ever seen a furious rabbit?” “Don’t the bucks fight?” questioned Sir Richmond. Dr. Martineau admitted the point.