"And they two have been the greatest kind of friends."
"He didn't touch you, did he?"
"No — no — no."
"What a — what a devil! What treachery! A regular greaser trick!"
"Look out he don't stab you in the back. If that's the kind of man he is, you never can tell."
Frenna drew the knife from the wall.
"Guess I'll keep this toad-stabber," he observed. "That fellow won't come round for it in a hurry; goodsized blade, too." The group examined it with intense interest.
"Big enough to let the life out of any man," observed Heise.
"What — what — what did he do it for?" stammered McTeague. "I got no quarrel with him."
He was puzzled and harassed by the strangeness of it all. Marcus would have killed him; had thrown his knife at him in the true, uncanny "greaser" style. It was inexplicable. McTeague sat down again, looking stupidly about on the floor. In a corner of the room his eye encountered his broken pipe, a dozen little fragments of painted porcelain and the stem of cherry wood and amber.