Page:The Ruby of Kishmoor (1908).djvu/54

 some surprise, beheld him clap to the door and with a single movement shoot the bolt and turn the key therein. The next instant he turned to Jonathan a visage transformed as suddenly as though he had dropped a mask from his face. The gossiping and polite little old bachelor was there no longer, but in his stead a man with a countenance convulsed with some furious and nameless passion.

“That ball!” he cried, in a hoarse and raucous voice. “That ivory ball! Give it to me upon the instant!”

As he spoke he whipped out from his bosom a long, keen Spanish knife that in its every appearance spoke without equivocation of the most murderous possibilities.

The malignant passions that distorted every lineament of the countenance of the little old gentleman in black filled our hero with such astonishment that he knew not whether he were asleep or awake; but when he beheld the other advancing with the naked and shining knife in his hand his reason returned to him like a flash. Leap-