It was, Cudyk saw with shock, Tom De Grasse. The youngster was up,
moving past Rack--who made no move to stop him, did not even change
expression--past the squat man, turning a yard beyond, almost at the
front of the room. His square, almost childish face was tight with
strain. There was a pistol in one big hand.
Cudyk felt something awaken in him which blossomed only at moments like
this, when one of his fellow men did something particularly puzzling:
the root, slain but still quasi-living, of the thing that had once
been his central drive and his trademark in the world--his insatiable,
probing, warmly intelligent curiosity about the motives of men.
On the surface, this action of De Grasse's was baldly impossible.
He was committed to Rack's cause twice over, by conviction and by
the shearing away of every other tie; and still more important, he
worshipped Rack himself with the devotion that only fanatics can
inspire. It was as if Peter had defied Christ.
The three men stood motionless for what seemed a long time. Monk,
halted with his weight on one foot, faced De Grasse with his knife hand
slightly extended, thumb on the blade. He was visibly tense, waiting
for a word from Rack. But Rack stood as if he had forgotten time and
space, staring bemused over Monk's shoulder at De Grasse. The fourth
man, Spider--bones and gristle, with a corpse-growth of grey-white
hair--stood up slowly. Rack put a hand on his shoulder and pressed him
down again.
Cudyk thought: Kathy Burgess.
It was the only answer. De Grasse knew, of course, everything that
had passed between Harkway and the girl. There was no privacy worth
mentioning in the Quarter. Pressed in this narrow ghetto, every man
swam in the effluvium of every other man's emotions. And De Grasse was
willing, apparently, to give up everything that mattered to him, to
save Kathy Burgess pain.
It said something for the breed, Cudyk thought--not enough, never
enough, for you saw it only in pinpoint flashes, the noble individual
who was a part of the bestial mob--but a light in the darkness,
nevertheless.