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248 had been working, for a fraction of a second shot into the face of the other. It did not delay at all; it was a purely accidental flash and could not have been said to show the features at all—only a posture, an expression, a personality of a strong and cruel man. He muttered some short, hoarse imprecation at the other; but before Eaton heard the voice, he had stopped as if struck, and his breath had gone from him.

His instant's glimpse of that face astounded, stunned, stupefied him. He could not have seen that man! The fact was impossible! He must have been mad; his mind must have become unreliable to let him even imagine it. Then came the sound of the voice—the voice of the man whose face he had seen! It was he! And, in place of the paralysis of the first instant, now a wild, savage throe of passion seized Eaton; his pulses leaped so it seemed they must burst his veins, and he gulped and choked. He had not filled in with insane fancy the features of the man whom he had seen; the voice witnessed too that the man in the dark by the wall was he whom Eaton—if he could have dreamed such a fact as now had been disclosed—would have circled the world to catch and destroy; yet now with the destruction of that man in his power—for he had but to aim and empty his automatic pistol at five paces—such destruction at this moment could not suffice; mere shooting that man would be petty, ineffectual. Eaton's fingers tightened on the handle of his pistol, but he held it now not as a weapon to fire but as a dull weight with which to strike. The grip of his left hand clamped onto the short steel bar, and with lips parted—breathing once, it seemed, for each heartbeat and yet choking, suffocating—he leaped forward.