“No salesman’s pitch, I assure you!” Dickie said cheerfully. “The university outfitters carry stocks and can supply any gentleman wishing to display his support for the ladies. They open at nine. Mind you don’t get trampled in the rush.”

With understanding of the game they were playing had come a stomach-wrenching spasm of contempt, but also a measure of self-assurance. Several sharp barbs had been launched at his hide, but he had shrugged them off and lowered his horns. He knew what to do next. He’d snort a bit, paw the ground, choose from among them a target for his utter derision and charge. No need for a massacre. It would be enough to leave one ceremonial corpse behind in the sand as a warning to the others.

He began to relax. He even felt the stirrings of embarrassment that he’d sunk so far into idiocy as to prepare himself for an actual physical attempt on his life. What a chump! He loosened his grip on the knuckleduster he’d borrowed from Solly at the shelter and hoped the ugly metal contraption wasn’t detectable in his jacket pocket. Overkill! The last time he’d used Solly’s Sweetener in earnest, he’d nearly severed his own finger.

He glanced, still smiling, at the lineup of adversaries. A row of weeds! The worst he could suffer from this lot was a bruised ego. He’d settle for that. This was a deluded, self-congratulatory, twisted bunch of nincompoops, he reckoned, and he was looking forward now to giving them a comeuppance they would understand.

“Sadism”? Was that the word for their mental affliction?

Common enough behaviour, taking pleasure from inflicting pain on others. And as old as mankind. You had to wonder why it had had to wait until the present day to acquire a name for itself. The Marquis de Sade? One hundred years in the grave now, and good riddance! That aristocratic libertine had been a bursting boil on the face of humanity, Dickie thought, the one-man cesspit of the ancien régime. But he was a symptom of the disease, and no one man, however evil, deserved to have his name forever linked with such a condition. In his violent life, Dickie had seen many examples of cruelty, had even felt the hot surge towards it in himself, recognised it for what it was and controlled it.

But it seemed to be a mental condition readily inherited. Children, left unchecked, took delight in taunting and humiliating other weaker children. Some never responded to the civilising influences of kindly mothers and fathers, priests and schoolmasters. Some, indeed, were pushed deeper down into the pit by those very angels who were meant to inspire and correct them.