He did talk about it later, curiously clouded though it was. The years in Buffalo. The violent love affair with Inge. The catastrophic scene when he found her with Regan, king-pin mobster. The way he felt turned inside-out, the lifetime of faith in the Syndic behind him and the lifetime of a faith in Inge ahead of him, both wrecked, the booze, the flight from Buffalo to Erie, to Pittsburgh, to Tampa, to New York. And somehow, insistently, the ringing bell, the wobbling pendulum and the flashing light that kept intruding between episodes of reality. T. G. listened patiently, fed him, hid him when infrequent patrols went by. T. G. never told him his own story, but a bloated woman who lived with a yellow-toothed man in an abandoned storage tank did one day, her voice echoing from the curving, windowless walls of corrugated plastic. She said T. G. had been an alky chemist, reasonably prosperous, reasonably happy, reasonably married. His wife was the faithful kind and he was not. With unbelievable slyness she had dulled the pain for years with booze and he had never suspected. They say she had killed herself after one frightful week-long debauche in Riveredge. T. G. came down to Riveredge for the body and returned after giving it burial and drawing his savings from the bank. He had never left Riveredge since. "Worsh'p the grun' that man walks on," the bloated woman mumbled. "Nev' gets mad, nev' calls you hard names. Give y'a bottle if y' need it. Talk to y' if y' blue. Worsh'p that man." Max Wyman walked from the storage tank, sickened. T. G.'s charity covered that creature and him. It was the day he told T. G.: "I'm getting out of here." The gray, paralyzed-looking face almost smiled. "See a man first?" "Friend of yours?" "Somebody who heard about you. Maybe he can do something for you. He feels the way you do about the Syndic." Wyman clenched his teeth. The pain still came at the thought. Syndic, Hogan, Inge and betrayal. God, to be able to hit back at them! The red ride ebbed. Suddenly he stared at T. G. and demanded: "Why? Why should you put me in touch? What is this?" T. G. shrugged. "I don't worry about the Syndic. I worry about people. I've been worrying about you. You're a little insane, Max, like all of us here." "God damn you!" "He has...." Max Wyman paused a long time and said: "Go on, will you?" He realized that anybody else would have apologized. But he couldn't and he knew that T. G. knew he couldn't. The old man said: "A little insane. Bottled-up hatred. It's better out of you than in. It's better to sock the man you hate and stand a chance of having him sock you back than it is just to hate him and let the hate gnaw you like a grave-worm." "What've you got against the Syndic?"