Page:The council of seven.djvu/155

 The Colossus, however, with an odd concentration of voice and eye, went on developing the theme in his own peculiar manner.

"She was everything to me," he said. "Just—everything."

Somehow that husky wheeze put John in mind of a Californian rattler he had heard more than once in his travels. It now struck right home to his heart.

"Everything is a big word." He tried to keep his voice level, but restrain himself as he might he was beginning to see red.

"A big word—yes—I agree." The wheeze became a snarl of subtle contempt. "But in this case it's the only one you see."

Helen's lover had an illusion of fangs striking his flesh.

"What do you mean?" he demanded with savage eyes.

Saul Hartz shrugged contemptuously and spread his hands like a stage Frenchman.

In the vain hope of freeing his veins of a poison, Endor repeated a futile question. With a skill, in itself a mockery, his enemy tossed it lightly into the air.

"Isn't it better in some cases," he said, picking each word with the fetid delicacy of a Baudelaire, "to leave, my dear friend, just a little to the imagination?"

The words in the ear of John Endor were those of a devil. He could but gasp. There was no mistaking their implication. Looking squarely across at the man