He groaned, and rolled his head miserably about. He had understood Sybil's words to be: "Your message—your awful message!" and that was enough to arouse the suspicions of the poor half-crazed creature. "'What are you doing here?' Curse him! I can remember how hard it was for you to get her here in the first place! It was coax and plead and promise then! Now, it's 'what are you doing here!' She is not like little Bess. She will be more likely to kill him than herself!"
He started, and stood upright. "That must not be!" he said. "That would utterly ruin her young life! No, my beautiful! so pale—so frightened! Oh, I—" He broke off, and went shambling over to the box-office and asked for the chamois.
"In the drawer, there," said Barney, briefly.
"Hand one out," said Jim; "my hands are all oily and grimy from cleaning that arsenal in there. I can't touch anything without leaving a mark."
Barney handed out the article, and Jim deliberately returned to the private office. As he entered he drew the heavy portière over the closed door and passed to the desk in the corner and sat down.
Stewart had been much shocked at the blow that had fallen so suddenly upon Sybil, and had shown her such tender sympathy and love that at last the tears had rushed to her hot eyes, and now, within the circle of his arm, her head against his shoulder, she stood and sobbed piteously. Neither of them noticed Jim, and then suddenly, for the first time, she put into words something of her longing for his open protection and love. "Oh," she cried, "must I go there alone? Must I face this terrible thing without you?"
Jim heard, and his face was dreadful. A pale fire shone in his watery eyes, his nostrils dilated and quivered rapidly, his upper lip drew tremblingly upward at one corner, he had all the look of a helpless cur about to pass into a convulsion.
Sybil had but spoken Thrall's own thought. He, too, was thinking how hard it was that he could not take a husband's place by the side of this stricken creature of his love, and he groaned but made no answer. And then, poor child, the thought came to her of some other woman acting with him. A jealous pain was in her voice as she cried: "And you will put another woman in my place, Stewart? Oh, Stewart, how can I bear it all?"
There came from the corner a strange sort of snarl. Jim Roberts was on his feet, a dull red had spread over his face, his very eyeballs were suffused. Thrall turned his head, saw, and, with all his strength, flung Sybil from him, and simultaneously with Jim's "No, damn you, you'll put no other woman in her place!" the "bulldog" barked, and the bullet crashed into the breast where her head had rested.
For an instant there was utter silence; a smoke, an evil odor, and three white faces—that was all! Thrall, who had clapped his hand over the wound, stood tall and erect a moment, then he began to settle together, as it were, and slowly he sank backward upon the couch behind him, his head against the wall, his right hand partly supporting him. He was perfectly ghastly, but entirely conscious, and calm and self-controlled to an astounding degree. He tried to draw a long breath, and then a new horror was in the room—the horror of that agonized breathing. He spoke, painfully, word by word, and his thought was all for the woman he loved, who lay against the wall opposite, her arms outstretched on either side just as she had staggered there when Stewart flung her to safety.