Page:Arthur Stringer - The Door of Dread.djvu/379

 his white teeth. But instead of depicting merriment, that sinister contraction of the y muscles seemed more like the unmasking of a battery, seemed more menacing than even the wink of the polished metal of the revolver in his hand as that hand moved upward.

She was not crafty, now, for there seemed to be no time for craftiness. In that austere moment of finalities she came austerely to the point. For she knew exactly what he intended to do.

"Yuh can't do it!" she quietly announced. "Yuh can't do it and get away!"

This warning, she saw, meant nothing to Keudell, for Keudell was no longer a sentient and reasoning being. He was a blind accumulation of instincts harrying him to strike before he himself could be struck. His will was a city with all its wires down. There was no way by which she could send a message into its storm-stricken central offices. No voice could reach him; no word could strike home to the still judicial vaults of reason. It would be like trying to argue with a tiger. He would act, and act at once.

Yet even tigers, she remembered, had been held back by mystery, by a mirror in daylight or a