Page:Edison Marshall--The voice of the pack.djvu/262

244 it. I'm not used to fawning to a coyote like you, and I can't stand it."

But Cranston hardly heard. An idea had flamed in his mind and cast a red glamour over all the scene about him. It was instilling a poison in his nerves and a madness in his blood, and it was searing him, like fire, in his dark brain. Nothing seemed real. He suddenly bent forward, tense.

"That's all right about you," he said. "But you'd be a little more polite if it was Snowbird—and Dan—that would have to pay."

Perhaps the color faded slightly in Lennox's face; but his voice did not change.

"They 'll see your footprints before they come in and be ready," Lennox replied evenly. "They always come by the back way. And even with a pistol, Snowbird's a match for you."

"Did you think that was what I meant?" Cranston scorned. "I know a way to destroy those letters, and I 'll do it—in the four seconds that I said, unless you tell. I'm not even sure I'm goin' to give you a chance to tell now; it's too good a scheme. There won't be any witnesses then to yell around in the courts. What if I choose to set fire to this house?"

"It would n't surprise me a great deal. It's