“Too bad you weren’t here earlier,” said Tom. “The law needed your defense.”
“So?” he was dully aware. His eyes peered out, like a big dog’s, disturbed at feed.
“I think Officer Murphy might do well to ar-r-rest you all,” said Dounia.
“Oh, you wouldn’t have him do that,” cried Hill, with a slightly trembling voice. “It is such fun breaking all the Commandments.”
“So long as glasses are not broken,” said Tom.
“How is work, Murphy,” asked Korn with a serious full face whose irony was far beyond the detective’s wit.
“Oh, slow ... glp. Ain’t much ... glp ... doin’.” Murphy looked up and down the table, interested at last, lacking something. “Say, Flora,” his gross voice thrust out. “A little of the red?”
The gathering paused momentarily about the intrusion: swirled about it. He was a gap in its midst, a load on its vital spirit. His fleshly dullness must be smeared over with raillery and laughter. The crowd began to digest him. Murphy disappeared.
His heft, now dissolved, was an added strength in the room’s swelter.
Tom rode the wave of broken personalities and whipped it and steered it. Lagora forgot his duties toward Lettie and tried to make love to Flora. He flattered her. He owed her money. He thought it might be well not to have to pay for his dinners. Signora Sanni flicked off his words like flies. She was learning the unlikelihood of being paid. And Lettie Dew, released, allowed herself to gaze full and long at David who was back in the storm taking its breast, distinguishing no thing. Phoebe was moist and breathing hard. She was safe, however, beside Korn. Her sense of safety crowned with smugness her bibulous affection.