title: Backward Glances: People and Events from Inside and Out
author: Conrad Black
description: <b>Praise for Conrad Black: </b><br>"Black's prose bowls the reader effortlessly along: he seamlessly weaves together the political and personal." -- <i>Daily Telegraph</i><br>"Conrad Black is incapable of doing anything but give his audience its money's worth."<i> -- The Globe and Mail</i><br>"Black is a writer of great force and panache." <i>-- New Criterion</i><br>"Conrad Black's candor on just about every conceivable topic is not only surprising but practically unprecedented." <i>-- Vanity Fair</i>
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  ##### www.blackmask.com
  
  * * *
  
  The Brute
  
  * * *
  
  # The Brute
  
  
  ### Joseph Conrad
  
  
  This page copyright © 2002 Blackmask Online.
  
  
  http://www.blackmask.com  
    
    
  Dodging in from the rain-swept street, I exchanged a smile and a
  
  
  glance with Miss Blank in the bar of the Three Crows. This exchange
  
  
  was effected with extreme propriety. It is a shock to think that, if
  
  
  still alive, Miss Blank must be something over sixty now. How time
  
  
  passes!
  
  
  Noticing my gaze directed enquiringly at the partition of glass and
  
  
  varnished wood, Miss Blank was good enough to say, encouragingly:
  
  
  "Only Mr. Jermyn and Mr. Stonor in the parlour, with another
  
  
  gentleman I've never seen before."
  
  
  I moved towards the parlour door. A voice discoursing on the other
  
  
  side (it was but a matchboard partition) rose so loudly that the
  
  
  concluding words became quite plain in all their atrocity:
  
  
  'That fellow Wilmot fairly dashed her brains out, and a good job
  
  
  too!"
  
  
  This inhuman se