Page:Chipperfield--Unseen Hands.djvu/309

Rh had been merely tolerated. I used to look around the table sometimes and try to choose which should be next; for they must all go now, and quickly. Every bit of food they put into their mouths meant so much money out of Rannie's pocket, money which would help him to forget the injury I had done him!

"I had read somewhere of a mirror falling and killing someone; and I thought of that heavy portrait over the desk in the library and how I could coax Gene to sit under it; for he would have been of age in another month, and I decided that he must never get his hands on his property or it would be gone in a year.

"I was strong; nobody knew how strong I was—"

"Nobody knows how strong I am!" A raucous echo burst upon their ears; and for a moment the horrified, fascinated gaze of the others turned from the crazed woman to the huge cage in the corner, where Socrates danced excitedly upon his perch and faithfully repeated the message which he had at some past moment of gloating triumph learned from her lips. Odell seized a dark table-cover and threw it over the cage, and the echo died in an indignant squawk.

"I was strong, but I couldn't break that cable which held up the picture until one day I overheard a couple of workmen next me in a crowded car talking about a new electric file and what it would do. I went to an electrical supply shop and saw those files; and one of them went away with me under my cape, although I had asked for and purchased only a toaster. I thought I might need a big saw, too; and that I got at a hardware store over in Brooklyn. Do you see how clever I am? No one could ever know.