The merchant spoke up, timid and deprecating.

As though the words were vitriol, the other started, whirled face to face, and was seized with a new raving.
Something protruded at his waistband, like a rudimentary, Darwinian stump.

To this, all at once, his hand flung back.

With a wrench and a glitter, he flourished a blade above his head.

Heywood sprang to intervene, in the same instant that the disturber of trade swept his arm down in frenzy.