"Psst!" said Johnson Boller.
Anthony left the room with a motion that was more twitch than anything else, and he left it none too soon. The shock, or the first of it, was over; Robert Vining was coming back to them, not like a nice young man, but rather like a Kansas cyclone! Three thuds in the corridor, and he appeared before them.
Robert's countenance was gray-white; his white lips, parted a little, seemed to be stretched over his teeth; his eyes blazed blue fire! And behind Robert—and be it confessed that there was a certain indefinite atmosphere of fright about her—Beatrice smiled.
"So you—you—you beastly scoundrel!" Robert began, his hands working as he looked straight at Johnson Boller and ignored the very existence of Anthony Fry. "I don't know whether a thing like you can pray, but if you can, pray quick!"
"Me?" Johnson Boller gulped.
Robert laughed dreadfully.
"Don't waste your time gaping!" he said, thickly. "Pray if you want to, because you're going to die! D'ye hear? I'm going to choke out your nasty life as I'd choke the life out of a mad dog."
"Not my life!" Johnson Boller protested, with pale lips, as he pointed at Anthony. "He——"
"Whatever he may have had to do with luring her here I can settle with him afterward!" Robert cried. "My concern is with you; and if you want to say anything, hurry about it. I can't hold myself more than another second or two!"
By way of proving it, he stalked down upon Johnson Boller—not rapidly, but with a deadly slowness and deliberation which suggested the tiger coming down upon its prey. His flaring eyes had fascinated the victim, too, for Johnson Boller could not move a muscle. Once he tried to smile a farewell at Beatrice; his eyes would not remain away from Robert even long enough for that. Once he tried to look at Anthony, but it was quite useless.