He bent down, drew up the trouser of his left leg to the knee, and pushed the sock into his boot, so that the calf of the leg was exposed. On the fleshy part of the calf could be plainly seen a large birth-stain. With the movement of an acrobat he raised that leg over the bed, over the eyes of Mrs. Ilam, and held it there during several seconds. Then he dropped it.
“There!” he exclaimed. “That’s to show you who it is you have to deal with.”
His voice was cruel, icy, and inexorable. He had no pity, no trace of mercy, for the woman who, whatever the enormity of her sins, was entitled to some respect by reason of her extreme age, her absolutely defenceless condition, and her suffering.
“They tell me you can answer ‘yes’ or ‘no,’” he said, “by your eyelids. Blinking means ‘yes,’ and no movement means ‘no.’ I am going to put some questions to you. Did you take the photograph out of the box? Answer.”
Mrs. Ilam closed her eyes and kept them closed.
“What does that mean?” Jetsam grumbled. “Open your eyes again, murderess.”
But Mrs. Ilam did not open her eyes again. She obstinately kept them closed; and she might have been asleep, except that now and then a tear exuded from under the lids.
“I’ll make you open them,” cried Jetsam.
His hand approached the old woman’s eyes, but even his implacable and cruel bitterness recoiled from the coward villainy of touching that stricken and helpless organism. He drew back his hand, and some glimmering sense of the dreadfulness of the scene which he was acting reached his heart. The thought ran through his brain that it was a good thing Rosie had not been present.
“Very well,” he said, “as you like. Only I know that you, or one of you, must have taken that photograph out of the box, and I have every reason to believe that it is in this room. In any case I mean to know very shortly whether it is or not.”