"O," cried he, "that's what you want, is it!"
He bent over his desk, with his eyes fixed on those other evil eyes that still retained some likeness to his own, and with his left arm raised in a boxer's defensive attitude, to guard his head, while his right hand groped for something in a drawer. It was a moment's work. Philip had seized that uplifted left arm, and was hanging on to it like a cat, with his knife between his teeth, when George clapped the muzzle of a revolver to his brow.
"There are plenty of wild beasts in London besides you," he said, "and I am not such a fool as to be without the means of settling a chance visitor of your sort. Drop your knife, and march."
The outcast dropped his knife submissively. He was too weak for anything more than a spasmodic violence.
"Take your pistol away from my head," he whined.
"Certainly, when you are outside my door."
"You might give me a handful of silver, George. I haven't a week's life left in me."
"All the better for society if you hadn't an hour's life in you. Be off. I'm tired of holding this revolver to your head, and I don't mean to let it go till you're off my premises."
Philip saw that there was no hope. Food and shelter were all he had hoped for; but even these blessings were not for him. He backed out of the office, closely followed by George, holding the muzzle of the revolver within an inch or so of the fraternal brains. Upon the threshold only did he pause.
"Tell me one thing," he said. "You won't give me sixpence to buy a loaf of bread or a glass of gin. Give me one scrap of comfort. It need cost you nothing. Tell me something bad of Valentine Hawkehurst: that he's gone to the dogs, or drowned himself; that his wife has run away from him, or his house been burned to the ground. Tell me that he's had a taste of my luck; and that Ann Woolper has died in a workhouse. It will be as good as meat and drink to me, and it will cost you nothing."