"... enough radioactives ... kill a thousand men ... freak ... a
freak ..." In his agitation he forgot for a moment to inhale through
the respirator.

Even Effie--taken off guard, all the fears that had been drilled into
her twanging like piano wires--shrank from the skeletal-seeming shape
beside her, held herself to it only by desperation.

Patrick did it for her. He disengaged her arm and stepped briskly away.
Then he whirled on them, smiling sardonically, and started to speak, but
instead looked with distaste at the chattering Geiger counter he held
between fingers and thumb.

"Have we listened to this racket long enough?" he asked.

Without waiting for an answer, he put down the instrument on the table.
The cat hurried over to it curiously and the clicks began again to
mount in a minor crescendo. Effie lunged for it frantically, switched it
off, darted back.

"That's right," Patrick said with another chilling smile. "You do well
to cringe, for I'm death itself. Even in death I could kill you, like a
snake." And with that his voice took on the tones of a circus barker.
"Yes, I'm a freak, as the gentleman so wisely said. That's what one
doctor who dared talk with me for a minute told me before he kicked me
out. He couldn't tell me why, but somehow the dust doesn't kill me.
Because I'm a freak, you see, just like the men who ate nails and walked
on fire and ate arsenic and stuck themselves through with pins. Step
right up, ladies and gentlemen--only not too close!--and examine the man
the dust can't harm. Rappaccini's child, brought up to date; his
embrace, death!

"And now," he said, breathing heavily, "I'll get out and leave you in
your damned lead cave."

He started toward the window. Hank's gun followed him shakingly.

"Wait!" Effie called in an agonized voice. He obeyed. She continued
falteringly, "When we were together earlier, you didn't act as if ..."

"When we were together earlier, I wanted what I wanted," he snarled at
her. "You don't suppose I'm a bloody saint, do you?"

"And all the beautiful things you told me?"

"That," he said cruelly, "is just a line I've found that women fall for.
They're all so bored and so starved for beauty--as _they_ generally put
it."

"Even the garden?" Her question was barely audible through the sobs that
threatened to suffocate her.

He looked at her and perhaps his expression softened just a trifle.

"What's outside," he said flatly, "is just a little worse