"And if you do I'll buy a bigger one." It was hard to begin but Kenny with his mouth set thought of Joan.

He told Adam Craig he was a miser.
In the dreadful silence the tick of the old clock on the mantel seemed to Kenny's distracted ears a perpetuity of measured taps upon a death-drum.

He thought of Poe and the pit and the pendulum.

He thought of Joan and told himself fiercely that he did it all for her; for her he was winding around himself a chain foredoomed to clank.

And he wondered why on earth the old man did not speak.
The suspense became intolerable.