'Or would you let us off with a caution?' That was a good idea. I looked back at the nutty one. 'How's that cut?' 'Champion,' he said. There was a bright, brimming red line at his eye. 'You all right?' the boy then called out to me, 'Keeping all right?' His affliction took him in such a way that he never uttered the first of those two questions without adding the second. At any rate, I ignored him. A caution would meet the case, I decided. 'You are to be cautioned' I said to Brilliantine, wishing I'd reached up to 'C' in my Railway Police Manual. The bloke was chalking his cue. I took out my notebook. 'Name?' 'Cameron,' he said, blowing loose chalk off the cue tip. 'John Cameron.' 'What's your brother's name?' 'Duncan,' he said. I set down the date and then: 'I, John Cameron, having committed the affray of assault, have been cautioned by Detective Stringer of the Railway Force.' 'Sign here,' I said, passing over the pencil and the notebook, which came back with a great cross over the entire page, and most of what I'd set down obliterated. 'There's no need to look like that,' he said, 'I told you I didn't know me letters.' I put the notebook away. 'Work for the Company, do you?' I said. But he must have done, otherwise he wouldn't have been drinking in the Institute. He nodded. 'Department?' I asked. 'Goods station' he said, with the greatest reluctance. 'Outdoor porter.' 'And what about the lad?' 'Not up to working.' 'Well, if I see you scrapping in here again, you're for it' I said. I turned away and an arm was at my throat, squeezing hard. It wasn't Brilliantine. He was standing before me like a soldier at ease, with snooker cue in lieu of rifle, and seeming to grow smaller, to be shooting backwards in a straight line along the gangway between the tables. It was crazy but the thing that was amiss was of the order of a disaster: I could not breathe. The snooker hall was being shut off by a blackness coming from left and right above and below.