“Then they both moved.”
“How did they move?”
“They moved,” now Leper was smiling, a charming and slightly arch smile, like a child who
knows he is going to say something clever, “they moved like an engine.”
In the baffled silence I began to uncoil slowly.
“Like an engine!” Brinker’s expression was a struggle between surprise and disgust.
“I can’t think of the name of the engine. But it has two pistons. What is that engine? Well
anyway, in this engine first one piston sinks, and then the next one sinks. The one holding on to
the trunk sank for a second, up and down like a piston, and then the other one sank and fell.”
Someone on the platform exclaimed, “The one who moved first shook the other one’s balance!”
“I suppose so.” Leper seemed to be rapidly losing interest.
“Was the one who fell,” Brinker said slowly, “was Phineas, in other words the one who moved
first or second?”
Leper’s face became guileful, his voice flat and impersonal. “I don’t intend to implicate myself.
I’m no fool, you know. I’m not going to tell you everything and then have it used against me
later. You always did take me for a fool, didn’t you? But I’m no fool any more. I know when I
have information that might be dangerous.” He was working himself up to indignation. “Why
should I tell you! Just because it happens to suit you!”
“Leper,” Brinker pleaded, “Leper, this is very important—”
“So am I,” he said thinly, “I’m important. You’ve never realized it, but I’m important too. You
be the fool,” he gazed shrewdly at Brinker, “you do whatever anyone wants whenever they want
it. You be the fool now. Bastard.”
Phineas had gotten up unnoticed from his chair. “I don’t care,” he interrupted in an even voice,
so full of richness that it overrode all the others. “I don’t care.”
I tore myself from the bench toward him. “Phineas—!”
He shook his head sharply, closing his eyes, and then he turned to regard me with a handsome
mask of face. “I just don’t care. Never mind,” and he started across the marble floor toward the
doors.
“Wait a minute!” cried Brinker. “We haven’t heard everything yet. We haven’t got all the facts!”