Slowly, surreptitiously one hand
came out of his pocket, advanced by the fractions of inches towards his
hip; advanced and halted and advanced again, reached almost--almost--.
"That'll do, you!" It was not a voice that spoke, it was a snarl: the
snarl of an angry animal. "Put that fist back in your breeches or by
God--"
No need to complete that threat. Back went the hand, back as though
drawn by a spring, back as though it were a paralysed, useless thing.
"Now line up." At last the move had come, the move they had known was
but a question of time. "Toe the crack, every mother's son of you. Step
lively."
They obeyed. As Wagner's hand had done, they obeyed. Six men of them
there were: surly crippled Manning, with eyes ablaze and jaws set like a
trap; lank Wagner with his hands still in his pockets; Rank Judge,
stumping on his wooden leg; greasy adipose Buck Walker, who ran the meat
market; Slim Simpson, from the eating joint opposite, pale as the
tucked-in apron around his waist; last of all the stranger, tall,
smooth-shaven, alien in knickerbockers and blouse, his lips compressed,
at his throat the arteries pounding visibly through his fair skin. Up
they came at the word of command, like children with ill-learned lessons
to recite, like sheep with a collie at their heels. Humorous at another
time and another place, that compliance would have been; but with that
mute, prostrate figure there before them on the floor, with that other
menacing, dominating figure facing them, it was far from humorous.
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