It was the great hour of my life and I met it as I had never met another.

I looked and acted what I pretended to be, though a deep and intense passion, an almost ungovernable suspense, an icy sickening nausea abided with me.

All I needed, all I wanted was to get Sampson and Wright together, or failing that, to maneuver into such position that I had any kind of a chance.

Sampson's gun on the table made three distinct objects for me to watch and two of them could change position.
"What do you want here ?" demanded Wright.

He was red, bloated, thick-lipped, all fiery and sweaty from drink, though sober on the moment, and he had the expression of a desperate man in his last stand.
It _was_ his last stand, though he was ignorant of that.
"Me--Say, Wright, I ain't fired yet," I replied, in slow-rising resentment.
"Well, you're fired now," he replied insolently.
"Who fires me, I'd like to know ?" I walked up on the porch and I had a cigarette in one hand, a match in the other.