The man, who had risen on his’ entrance, stood motionless before him, his left hand pressed heavily upon his right, which, thickly bandaged, it seemed, he held against his chest. The fingers of the exposed hand were scarred and stunted; the face of the man was grey and rigid as a corpse’s—showing a grin of teeth, too; only the eyes in the face were piercingly alive like a crouching cat’s. He muttered something inaudible.
“What!” snapped the doctor. “Speak out. I can’t hear you.”
Again the stranger murmured.
“Hey!” said the doctor testily. “Can’t you speak louder? What is it? An accident—something the matter with your hand?”
He was of a quick nervous temperament, and harassed with much business. The figure before him was decent and respectable enough, but quite uneloquent of any sumptuary promise. And time with him meant money. He was opening his lips to speak again, and pretty summarily, to finish, when something in the stranger’s aspect, or attitude, arrested him. In an instant he had leapt, and, after a brief vicious struggle, had wrenched a knife from the man’s right hand. The apparent bandage on that had merely covered, it seemed, a deadly purpose. Geoletti, disarmed, stood quivering slightly, but otherwise impassive.
“I see,” said the doctor softly—“I see.” Watchful of the other, he glanced at the blade he had secured. It was a waspish sting of a thing, keen-tempered, folding into a handle which, when needed, became a hilt.
“Meant for me?” he inquired, lifting his brows. When bearded by a patient, he became frost and whipcord.
“No, no—not.” The words were spoken low, but distinct enough at last.
“For whom, then?”
The tip of Geoletti’s tongue travelled between his lips. He was evidently trying to master the reaction from a tremendous strain, and at the same time to find speech to lay the suspicion of any.