Ah, You React!

    During ‘Hammer Into Anvil’ Number 2 has Number 6 brought to his office by Number 14 and 2 guardians, who unceremoniously dump him in a chair. That’s because Number 6 defied his instructions to go to the Green Dome, as he didn’t have anything to talk about. But Number 2 saw it a different way, he saw that he and Number 6 had things to discuss, the girl for example. The girl whom Number 6 accused Number 2 of having murdered, Number 73. Technically 73 committed suicide, as she had attempted suicide before when she slashed her wrists. Number 2 might be guilty of driving 73 to her death, but he didn’t physically murder her. In any case Number 73 was lying in her hospital bed at the time, it wasn’t until Number 6 came bursting into the room that she leapt out of bed and threw herself to her death through the hospital window. You will observe how Number 6 leant out of the window and looked down. Now what motivated him to do that, a remembrance of Cobb’s supposed suicide perhaps? Number 6 just making sure that 73 jumping to her death wasn’t a put up job!
    But never mind the girl, she is easily dismissed by Number 2, he wants to talk about Number 6. But then many before this current Number 2 have tried that. Number 2 sees them as amateurs, while he is a professional, a professional sadist, doesn’t sound much like Thorpe! Number 2 then produces the blade of a sword from his shooting stick. How did he manage to smuggle that into The Village? One might have thought the ordinary shooting stick would have been taken from Number 2, and replaced by the regular umbrella shooting stick. How come Number 2 was allowed to keep his own shooting stick? Perhaps there was a laxity in security. After all Number 2’s sword shooting stick had not been the only illicit object which had been successfully smuggled into The Village, there had been Number 34’s transistor radio in ‘dance of The Dead.’
    Light blue eyes. Number 2 saw Number 6 as being fearless, or was he, after all everyman has his breaking point, and he sees Number 6 as being no exception. That’s what the two doctors thought in ‘Dance of The Dead’ and ‘Checkmate,’ and neither of them got anywhere near Number 6’s breaking point. But then they were not allowed to!

    As for Number 2, why the need to smuggle a sword shooting stick with him into The Village, perhaps he had a fear of the unknown and felt the need for self preservation, something to protect himself with should the need arise. But once Number 2 revealed the weapon, then why wasn’t it taken away from him? Perhaps Number 1 was giving Number 2 a sporting chance, that he who lives by the sword will one day perish by the sword!

   Footnote: in ‘Hammer Into Anvil’ there is one point when Number 2 does carry an umbrella shooting stick, when he and Number 14 have left the Green Dome, having descended the steps, on their way to the Town Hall. Of course the two men as Number 2 and Number 14 are stand-ins for Patrick Cargill and Basil Hoskins. But that is no excuse for the continuity error!

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