"I repeat: you are a fool." Still the gray eyes were unwavering.
"Why, you—you——" Spasmodically Luke's fingers closed down on the spare shoulder with crushing force.
By not so much as the flicker of an eyelash did Fuller betray the pain that must have come with that grip. He did not even wince, but swiftly lashed out with a bony fist, raking Luke's cheek with sharp knuckles. The blow stung, but was utterly futile. With a single cuff Luke could send the man sprawling; with a single wrench of his powerful hands, snap his spine. Yet he did neither, and the impulse to laugh coarsely died in his throat. Here was courage of a kind he never had encountered; here a man in whose bright eyes fearlessness and defiance mingled with a cool disdain that brought the first real feeling of inferiority Luke ever had experienced.
He relaxed his grip of Fuller's shoulder and his big hands fell loosely at his sides. It was that action which saved Fenton. He did not know it at the time, nor would he have believed it. But he was to remember many times and finally to realize it, though he never fully understood.
"That's better," breathed Fuller. And the ghost of a smile crinkled the corner of his mouth.
At the old man's warning Luke returned to his own work bench and was industriously engaged when the guard's eye showed at the peephole. Then the eye was gone and he grinned over at Fuller.
"How long you been in here?" he ventured.
"Five days in the sealed cell; ten altogether in the Workshop."
Luke pondered this. "How'd you get in the cell?"