Thomas Harris

Silence of the Lambs

Jonnie

"Time, Pilch!" A man's voice, shrill with excitement. "Let's go here. Time!" 

Starling stopped in the doorway. Two men sat at a laboratory table playing chess. Both were about thirty, one black-haired and lean, the other pudgy with wiry red hair. They appeared to be engrossed in the chessboard. If they noticed Starling, they gave no sign. If they noticed the enormous rhinoceros beetle slowly making its way across the board, weaving among the chessmen, they gave no sign of that either. Then the beetle crossef the edge of the board.

"Time, Roden," the lean one said instantly. 

The pudgy one moved his bishop and immediately turned the beetle around and started it trudging back the other way. 

"If the beetle just cuts across the corner, is time up then?" Starling asked. 

"Of course time's up then," the pudgy one said loudly, without looking up. "Of course it's up then. How do you play? Do you make him cross the whole board? Who do you play against, a sloth?"

Silence of the Lambs quotes

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