Page:Frank Packard - Greater Love Hath No Man.djvu/26

 to live, to palpitate, to move and throb and breathe out dread, soundless words.

"Varge! Varge!"—the words gurgled in choking terror from Merton's lips. "Why are you holding me like this? Let me go; let me go, I tell you!"

"I said I would do this thing"—Varge spoke in a low, deadly monotone. "But I will not do it. For your father's sake and your mother's sake, I said I would do anything—" Merton was battling now wildly, striking out frenzied, aimless blows; mad with a new fear, a physical fear, of Varge; struggling, squirming to free himself. Varge's body swayed not by so much as the fraction of an inch. His arms, like great steel rods, were motionless. It was as though he held, without thought of effort or exertion, some inanimate, paltry object in his grasp.

"—I will not do this thing"—Varge still spoke on, still in the same dull monotone. "What right have you to ask it, you blood-guilty son? What right have you to life that you ask my life for your life? I have no name, you say, to make a curse of—I have nothing to lose, you say, because I do not know who I am. I? I am Varge. You think that I have no soul, no conscience, that the foulest crime in God's sight means nothing to me—because I am a nobody!"

A faint, purling sound came from Merton. He had ceased to struggle. No hurt nor blow had Varge given him; but the cold fury of the man who held him, the fearful power of the grip upon him, that all his own strength would not avail to shake by one iota, seemed