Page:Walpole--portrait of man with red hair.djvu/264

 untouched they were as conscious as was Dunbar of a sudden helplessness—and of a new fear.

Harkness watched Crispin who had walked forward and now stood only a pace or two from Dunbar. Harkness saw that his excitement was almost uncontrollable. His legs, set widely apart, were quivering, his nostrils panting, his eyes quite closed so that he seemed a blind man scenting out his enemy.

"You miserable fellow," he said—and his voice was scarcely more than a whisper. "You fool—to think that you could interfere. I told you ... I warned you ... and now am I not justified? Yes—a thousand times. Within the next hour you shall know what pain is, and I shall watch you realise it."

Then his body trembled with a sort of passionate rhythm as though he were swaying to the run of some murmured tune. With his eyes closed and the shivering it was like the performance of some devotional rite. At least Dunbar showed no fear.

"You can do what you damn well please," he shouted. "I'm not afraid of you, mad though you are."

"Mad? Mad?" said Crispin, suddenly opening his eyes. "That depends. Yes, that depends. Is a man mad who acts at last when given a perfectly just and honourable opportunity for a pleasure from which he has restrained himself because the oppor-