IF A MAN BITES A DOG
51
ash fell to his firmly packed vest and filtered down into his lap.
"That's up to you," he said studying his clothes carefully
as he brushed himself with his hand.
"I don't understand."
"There's nothing to understand about it. Con you pay?"
"But my dear man," protested Mr. Doe politely as one
with a soft answer might seek to turn away wrath, "if I had
the money with which to pay I would have done so before this.
You wouldn't have had to send me a summons."
"Well, can you pay anything? Can you make me an offer?"
"But I told you, I told your young man when he came to
see me the other night, if I could make a settlement ..."
"Alright, don't make a song and dance out of it," Mr.
Schmuck barked. The softness of the man before him was
getting on his nerves. "I'm not here to argue with you.''
A feeling of humiliation, of futility, of weariness pervaded
Mr.
Doe's being, like a drug, making heavy his limbs.
"But I didn't mean to argue," he protested hopelessly.
"Alright, then come to court tomorrow.'' Mr. Schmuck
closed the file with an air of finality as much as to say "the in–
terview is at an end,'' and picking up a pencil made a notation
on his scratchpad.
All
the time he was talking the painful crease between Mr.
Doe's bewildered eyes had been deepening as if under the blows
of an unseen chisel. Now he stroked his forehead abstractedly
with the fingers of one hand as if he would smooth away the
deep parallel lines that puckered his brow. Why am I humiliat–
ing myself like this? he thought. What is this man to me that
I
should have to appeal to him like this? Why should he treat
me like a dog? I wouldn't talk to a dog that way, no, not even
to a dog. His head felt hot and ached dully but his fingers were
cold as ice and as he gripped his temples between thumb and
forefinger he shivered and it seemed to him that somewhere lost
in his brain was a thought that was struggling to come to the sur–
face, a thought that needed desperately to be expressed, but it
was drowning, it was suffocating and he was powerless to rescue
it.
"Couldn't you give me a little more time at least?" he said
rising from his chair. "Maybe in another month or two ..."
Mr. Schmuck toyed with his pencil and puffed at his cigar
in an attitude of momentous decision.
"Look here," he said suddenly glancing up at Mr. Doe and
