Page:O'Higgins--From the life.djvu/53

 "Is it?" Carey demanded. "Is it he?"

She made a fumbling gesture as if either pleadingly or defensively.

The man put back his rakish derby from his forehead. He had a prison hair-cut and a prison pallor. He bared his yellow teeth in an evil grin and said: "Sure, it's me. Eh, Mary? You're lookin' swell!"

Carey slammed the door and shot the bolt.

The man turned instantly, crouching, his hand at his hip pocket. Before he could draw his weapon, Carey had sprung at him, open-handed, from the door-step; and they fell, grappling.

Carey was no featherweight. He was still tough from the hardships of his youth. He was blind with hatred. And the touch of the struggling malevolent flesh under his hands put him into the sort of frenzy of murderous and loathsome revulsion that he might have felt in crushing a rat bare-handed. He struck and tore and strangled frantically; and the man, caught with one arm beneath him and still fighting to get out his revolver, was unable to protect him- self from such an assault. When he got the weapon free he was blinded with his own bleeding, and Carey wrenched the revolver from him and beat him on the head with it. He went limp. Carey was kneeling on his chest, throttling the life out of him, when the lack of resistance and the choking under his hands brought him to his senses. For one horrified moment he thought he had killed.