“You’re the hell of a—gentleman!” he exclaimed.
The two stood for a few moments without words, facing each other, while the lieutenant could hear the captain’s breath rising and falling in a panting thickness.
Surgeon James returning from a visit to a colic sufferer was trudging sleepily along the empty calle when he noted the light still burning in the captain’s window, and with an exclamation of remembrance for 10 the officer’s dark-ringed and sleepless eyes, he wheeled toward the door. Just as he neared it, a staccato and heated interchange of voices was borne out to him, and he hurried his step, but at the same instant a pistol shot bellowed blatantly in the quiet air and into his nostrils stole the acrid savor of burned powder.
The door, thrown open, gave him the startling picture of Comyn sagged across his own table and lying grotesque in the yellow light; and of Spurrier standing, wide-eyed by the window, with the green and cobalt background of the tropic night beyond his shoulders. While he gazed the lieutenant wheeled and thrust his head through the raised sash, under the jalousy.
“Halt!” cried James excitedly, leaping forward to possess himself of the pistol which Comyn had taken from his drawer and thrust aside. “Halt, Spurrier, or I’ll have to fire!”
The other turned back and faced his captor with an expression which it was hard to read. Then he shook his shoulders as though to disentangle himself from an evil dream and in a cool voice demanded:
“Do you mean to intimate, James, that you suspect me of killing Comyn?”
“Do you mean to deny it?” countered the other incredulously.
“Great God! I oughtn’t to have to. That shot was fired through the window. The bullet whined past my ear while my back was turned. That was why I looked out just now. Moreover, I am, as you see, unarmed.”
“God grant that you can prove these things, Spurrier, but they will need proof.” The doctor turned to 11 bend over the prostrate figure, and as he did so voices rose from the calle where already had sounded the alarm and response of running feet. “Or, perhaps,” added the doctor with stubborn suggestiveness, “you acted in self-defense.”