Harland sat down on a chair beside the door in the dark kitchen and put his hands on his knees. He sat staring at his hands; they were red and dirtgrained and trembling, his tongue was like a nutmeg grater from the cheap whiskey he had been drinking the last week, his whole body felt numb and sodden and sour. He stared at his hands.
Joe O’Keefe came back into the kitchen. “She’s loin down. She says there’s some soup on the back of the stove.... Here ye are. That’ll make a man of ye.... Joe you ought to been where I was last night. Went out to this here Seaside Inn to take a message to the chief about somebody tippin him off that they was going to close the market....
It was the goddamnedest thing you ever saw in your life. This guy who’s a wellknown lawyer down town was out in the hall bawlin out his gash about something. Jez he looked hard. And then he had a gun out an was goin to shoot her or some goddam thing when the chief comes up cool as you make em limpin on his stick like he does and took the gun away from him an put it in his pocket before anybody’d half seen what happened.... This guy Baldwin’s a frien o his see? It was the goddamnedest thing I ever saw. Then he all crumpled up like....”
“I tell you kid,” said Joe Harland, “it gets em all sooner or later....”
“Hay there eat up strong. You aint eaten enough.”
“I cant eat very well.”
“Sure you can.... Say Joe what’s the dope about this war business?”
“I guess they are in for it this time.... I’ve known it was coming ever since the Agadir incident.”
“Jez I like to see somebody wallop the pants off England after the way they wont give home rule to Ireland.”
“We’d have to help em.... Anyway I dont see how this can last long. The men who control international finance wont allow it. After all it’s the banker who holds the purse strings.”