Page:Arthur Stringer--The House of Intrigue.djvu/353

333 whisper, for I knew by this time that my words would be few.

His hand shot out and caught me by the throat. He held me there, masterfully, easily, the same as a marketman holds a chicken by the gullet. Painful as that grip was, and terrified as I stood, it did not keep me from hearing the shrill call of a voice from the stairway behind me.

"Michael!" sounded that call of horror, of warning, of unutterable unbelief. And I knew that it was the girl in the swan's-down who was speaking.

Her Michael, however, was intent on other things. That call was repeated, this time with a tremolo of resentment, of disgust. But all Michael's thoughts were centered on one movement. I knew what that movement was going to be, yet I had no way of stopping it, no way of even countering it. For in that movement, I could see, he intended to pay back more than one old score. It was a fool's way of doing it, but it was the only way he saw open to him. And it wasn't fear that made me wince as I saw the sulphur-covered hand suddenly draw up into one compact clump, it was more the thought of the absurdity of the movement and the almost pathetic and harebrained blindness of the man behind the movement.