hind the bar.

"Well, it makes me mad," answered Marcus, subsiding into a growl and
resuming his chair. "Hullo, Mac."

"Hullo, Mark."

But McTeague's presence made Marcus uneasy, rousing in him at once a
sense of wrong. He twisted to and fro in his chair, shrugging first one
shoulder and then another. Quarrelsome at all times, the heat of
the previous discussion had awakened within him all his natural
combativeness. Besides this, he was drinking his fourth cocktail.

McTeague began filling his big porcelain pipe. He lit it, blew a great
cloud of smoke into the room, and settled himself comfortably in his
chair. The smoke of his cheap tobacco drifted into the faces of
the group at the adjoining table, and Marcus strangled and coughed.
Instantly his eyes flamed.

"Say, for God's sake," he vociferated, "choke off on that pipe! If
you've got to smoke rope like that, smoke it in a crowd of muckers;
don't come here amongst gentlemen."

"Shut up, Schouler!" observed Heise in a low voice.

McTeague was stunned by the suddenness of the attack. He took his pipe
from his mouth, and stared blankly at Marcus; his lips moved, but he
said no word. Marcus turned his back on him, and the dentist resumed his
pipe.

But Marcus was far from being appeased. McTeague could not hear the talk
that followed between him and the harnessmaker, but it seemed to him
that Marcus was telling Heise of some injury, some grievance, and that
the latter was trying to pacify him. All at once their talk grew louder.
Heise laid a retaining hand upon his companion's coat sleeve, but Marcus
swung himself around in his chair, and, fixing his eyes on McTeague,
cried as if in answer to some protestation on the part of Heise:

"All I know is that I've been soldiered out of five thousand dollars."

McTeague gaped at him, bewildered. He removed his pipe from his mouth
a second time, and stared at Marcus with eyes full of trouble and
perplexity.

"If I had my rights," cried Marcus, bitterly, "I'd have part of that
money. It's my due--it's only justice." The dentist still kept silence.

"If it hadn't been for me," Marcus continued, addressing himself
directly to McTeague, "you wouldn't have had a cent of it--no, not a
cent. Where's my share, I'd like to know? Where do I come in? No, I
ain't in it any more. I've been played for a sucker, an' now that you've
got all you can out of me, now that you've done me out of my girl and
out of my money, you give me