A slight movement at the door—Utterbourne’s officers, together with Tsuda, were in the room. But Utterbourne merely stood his ground, gazing hard at the frenzied being before him, while he spoke again, in a ringing voice: “Mr. King!”
It seemed to have a calming and disarming effect. The victim shivered and breathed in noisily. His threatening pose dissolved, his arms dropping like pieces of flexible lead, while the knife clattered harmlessly on to the floor.
King staggered, and a moment later was lying on the cot. But he was not yet quiescent, for he beat at his hands furiously, and bit them, drawing blood. Muffled cries came from him on long sighs.
They beheld in his face a look of ravenous hunger. Presently a hand trembled over to the tabouret, and with fluttering fingers King took up the pipe. Even in this crazed and moribund condition he seemed to know to an exquisite fineness when the tiny browning ball had attained just the proper pitch—never the least bit burned, never toasted a shade too dry.
III
It was perhaps not so startling as kneeling on her grave and beholding her emerge from a temple; nevertheless, the entrance of Stella a few minutes later was distinctly sensational. Jerome came in just behind her—a situation complex in the extreme. As was characteristic, Utterbourne adjusted himself to it without the contraction or flurry of a single feature, and in one of his sharp, enigmatic silences.
Tsuda, after the first stupefied moment, seemed to wilt and shrink. He saw that he had been somehow outwitted. He was lost—Tsuda knew that conclusively. He did not dare look at the Captain, but stood where he was, shrinking, trembling a little. The game was up—it had been a curious conspiracy.... All at once he seemed to become a very old man.
Stella barely paused as she entered the room and the wave of almost tangible amazement broke about her. She crossed the room, her face white and unmoving, and dropped down beside the cot. She did not lay her hands upon her husband, but her words embraced him pityingly.
“Ferd—I’ve come back.”
The little spirit lamp was calmly alight, and she gazed at it with eyes in which there was nothing but misery.