"He goes home early. I don't see him again unless one of your hounds sends for him."
Steppe's smile was half sneer.
"You don't like Sault—a good fellow, huh?"
Moropulos wrinkled his nose like an angry dog. His beard seemed to stiffen and his eyes blazed.
"Like him—he's not human, that fellow! Nothing moves him, nothing. I tried to smash him up with a bottle, but he took it away from me as if I were a child. I hate a man who makes me feel like that—if he hadn't got my gun away I'd have laid him out. It would be fine to hurt the devil—and he is a devil, Steppe. Inhuman. Sometimes I give him a newspaper to read—just for the fun of it. But it never worries him."
"Don't try. He's a bigger man than you. You want to rouse him, huh? The day you do, God help you! I don't think you will. That's how I feel about him. He's cold. Chilly as a Druid's hell. He is dangerous when he's quiet—and he's always quiet."
"He is no use to me. It is a waste of money keeping him. I'll give you no more trouble."
Steppe pursed his lips until his curling black moustache bristled like the end of a brush. It was a grimace indicative of his skepticism. He had reason.
"Leave it. Sault will not give you any bother. I don't want strangers here, huh? Cleaners who are spying detectives."
Moropulos took his book again as his employer went out. But he did not read. His eyes looked beyond the edge of the page, his mind was busy. Detestation of Ambrose Sault was not assumed, as he had simulated so many likes and dislikes. Sault's maddening imperturbability, his immense superiority to the petty annoyances with which his daily companion fed him, his contempt for the Greek's vulgarity, these things combined to the fire of the man's hatred. They were incompatibles—it was impossible to imagine any two men more unlike.