Page:Buchan - The Thirty-Nine Steps (Grosset Dunlap, 1915).djvu/232

 was the murderer. Now I saw cruelty and ruthlessness where before I had only seen good-humour. His knife I made certain had skewered Scudder to the floor. His kind had put the bullet in Karolides. The plump man's features seemed to dislimn and form again, as I looked at them. He hadn't a face, only a hundred masks that he could assume when he pleased. That chap must have been a superb actor. Perhaps he had been Lord Alloa of the night before; perhaps not; it didn't matter. I wondered if he was the fellow who had first tracked Scudder and left his card on him. Scudder had said he lisped, and I could imagine how the adoption of a lisp might add terror.

But the old man was the pick of the lot. He was sheer brain, icy, cool, calculating, as ruthless as a steam hammer. Now that my eyes were opened I wondered where I had seen the benevolence. His jaw was like chilled steel, and his eyes had the inhuman luminosity of a bird's. I went on playing, and every second a greater hate welled up in