The two men stopped dead as they came face to face with one another. Elsie shrank back against the high yellow brick wall, her eyes fixed upon Morrison’s ravaged face.
“I couldn’t rest for thinking of it all. I know what happened to-day, Williams,” he said in a high, strained voice. “It can’t go on. You’re making Elsie’s life hell. Give her her freedom.”
“Damn you! Who are you to interfere between man and wife?” said Williams, low and fiercely. “I know what you want, both of you, but you won’t have it. Elsie’s my wife, and I shan’t let her go.”
“You’ve got to.”
Horace Williams, looking full at the youth, who was shaking from head to foot with excitement, gave his low, malevolent laugh.
Almost at the same instant Elsie heard her own voice screaming, “Don’t ... don’t...!” and saw the flash of a knife as Morrison raised his arm and struck again and again.
Williams spun round as though to run, and his eyes, oddly surprised-looking, glared, straight and unseeing, at Elsie.
Leslie Morrison stabbed at him again in the back.
“What have you done?” sobbed Elsie to Morrison. “Oh, go!”
She saw Morrison dash away up the passage, and at the same moment Horace Williams took a few steps forward.