Page:Vance--The trey o hearts.djvu/28

14 high and sharp. His mouth resembled a steel trap; while his forehead shelved back sharply from ragged black brows that shadowed eyes like live coals.

He was clothed in a black dressing-gown, and from the thighs down was covered by a woollen rug. He stared unblinking at the crimson blotter: a man seven eighths dead, completely paralyzed but for his head and his left arm.

A figure of savage patience he sat waiting—for years on end, for so long that those who knew him had well-nigh forgotten that Seneca Trine once had been as vital a creature as ever lived.

Presently a faint clicking disturbed the stillness. Seneca Trine had put forth his left hand and touched a button embedded in the desk. Something else clicked—this time a latch. There was the faint sound of a closing door, the hangings rustled, and a smallish man in black stole into the light, paused beside the desk, and waited for leave to speak.

The voice of Trine rang like a bell in the silence, a weirdly deep and sonorous voice to issue from that wasted frame.

"Well?"

"A telegram, sir—from England."

"Give it me!"

The old man seized the sheet of yellow paper, scanned it hungrily, and crushed it with a gesture of