McTeague gaped at him, bewildered.  He removed his pipe from his mouth a second time, and stared at Marcus with eyes full of trouble and perplexity.

“If I had my rights,” cried Marcus, bitterly, “I’d have part of that money.  It’s my due—­it’s only justice.”  The dentist still kept silence.

“If it hadn’t been for me,” Marcus continued, addressing himself directly to McTeague, “you wouldn’t have had a cent of it—­no, not a cent.  Where’s my share, I’d like to know?  Where do I come in?  No, I ain’t in it any more.  I’ve been played for a sucker, an’ now that you’ve got all you can out of me, now that you’ve done me out of my girl and out of my money, you give me the go-by.  Why, where would you have been to-day if it hadn’t been for me?” Marcus shouted in a sudden exasperation, “You’d a been plugging teeth at two bits an hour.  Ain’t you got any gratitude?  Ain’t you got any sense of decency?”

“Ah, hold up, Schouler,” grumbled Heise.  “You don’t want to get into a row.”

“No, I don’t, Heise,” returned Marcus, with a plaintive, aggrieved air.  “But it’s too much sometimes when you think of it.  He stole away my girl’s affections, and now that he’s rich and prosperous, and has got five thousand dollars that I might have had, he gives me the go-by; he’s played me for a sucker.  Look here,” he cried, turning again to McTeague, “do I get any of that money?”

“It ain’t mine to give,” answered McTeague.  “You’re drunk, that’s what you are.”

“Do I get any of that money?” cried Marcus, persistently.

The dentist shook his head.  “No, you don’t get any of it.”

“Now—­now,” clamored the other, turning to the harnessmaker, as though this explained everything.  “Look at that, look at that.  Well, I’ve done with you from now on.”  Marcus had risen to his feet by this time and made as if to leave, but at every instant he came back, shouting his phrases into McTeague’s face, moving off again as he spoke the last words, in order to give them better effect.

“This settles it right here.  I’ve done with you.  Don’t you ever dare speak to me again”—­his voice was shaking with fury—­“and don’t you sit at my table in the restaurant again.  I’m sorry I ever lowered myself to keep company with such dirt.  Ah, one-horse dentist!  Ah, ten-cent zinc-plugger—­hoodlum—­mucker!  Get your damn smoke outa my face.”

Then matters reached a sudden climax.  In his agitation the dentist had been pulling hard on his pipe, and as Marcus for the last time thrust his face close to his own, McTeague, in opening his lips to reply, blew a stifling, acrid cloud directly in Marcus Schouler’s eyes.  Marcus knocked the pipe from his fingers with a sudden flash of his hand; it spun across the room and broke into a dozen fragments in a far corner.