"Silence!" and the robber flung his bunda back; "get up! give me the papers, unless——"
Mr. Catspaw rose and walked to his desk. Viola stood quietly by, watching him.
The attorney's hands trembled as he produced the papers. They were in two bundles, and among them were some letters of Tengelyi's, which the Jew had abstracted with the rest.
"Here they are!" said Mr. Catspaw, with a hoarse voice; "you know their value. Ask whatever you please——"
"I don't want your money, keep it!" said the robber, advancing to seize the packet; when the attorney recollected that he kept a loaded pistol in the desk.
Yielding to an impulse of mad despair, he seized it and presented it at Viola.
The robber's eyes shot fire as he saw the weapon. He made a rush; the attorney fell, and the pistol was in Viola's hands.
That movement sealed Mr. Catspaw's doom. Viola was not cruel. He had an instinctive aversion to the shedding of blood. If Mr. Catspaw had given up the papers without resistance, he would have been safe; but the treachery of the action and the struggle inflamed the robber's wilder passions.
"Pity!" screamed Mr. Catspaw, as Viola seized him by the throat.
"Did you pity me when Susi begged for grace, when you wrote my death-warrant?"