Page:Arrowsmith - Sinclair Lewis.pdf/91

 "Good night, dear love—my love forever," he exulted.

In the still ghostliness of the hall, he laughed as he thought of how irritably Angus must have marched away. But from the window he discovered Angus huddled on the stone steps, asleep. As he touched the ground, he whistled, but stopped short. He saw bursting from the shadow a bulky man, vaguely in a porter's uniform, who was shouting:

"I've caught yuh! Back you come into the hospital, and we'll find out what you've been up to!"

They closed. Martin was wiry, but in the watchman's clasp he was smothered. There was a reek of dirty overalls, of unbathed flesh. Martin kicked his shins, struck at his boulder of red cheek, tried to twist his arm. He broke loose, started to flee, and halted. The struggle, in its contrast to the aching sweetness of Leora, had infuriated him. He faced the watchman, raging.

From the awakened Angus, suddenly appearing beside him, there was a thin sound of disgust. "Oh, come on! Let's get out of this. Why do you dirty your hands on scum like him?"

The watchman bellowed, "Oh, I'm scum, am I? I'll show you!"

He collared Angus and slapped him.

Under the sleepy street-lamp, Martin saw a man go mad. It was not the unfeeling Angus Duer who stared at the watchman; it was a killer, and his eyes were the terrible eyes of the killer, speaking to the least experienced a message of death. He gasped only, "He dared to touch me!" A pen-knife was somehow in his hands, he had leaped at the watchman, and he was busily and earnestly endeavoring to cut his throat.

As Martin tried to hold them he heard the agitated pounding of a policeman's night stick on the pavement. Martin was slim but he had pitched hay and strung telephone wire. He hit the watchman, judiciously, beside the left ear, snatched Angus's wrist, and dragged him away. They ran up an alley, across a courtyard. They came to a thoroughfare as an owl trolley glowed and rattled round the corner; they ran beside it, swung up on the steps, and were safe.

Angus stood on the back platform, sobbing. "My God, I wish I'd killed him! He laid his filthy hands on me! Martin! Hold me here on the car. I thought I'd got over that. Once when I was a kid I tried to kill a fellow— God, I wish I'd cut-that filthy swine's throat!"