It was his eyes. They were arrestingly uncommon eyes and, once seen, they must be remembered. What was the quality that made one notice them so instantly, Spurrier questioned himself. Then he realized.
They were inkily black eyes, but that was not all. There seemed to be in them no line of demarcation between iris and pupil—only liquid pools of jet.
The two men sat there as the shadows lengthened and talked “plumb friendly” as Colby later admitted to himself. They smoked Spurrier’s “fotched-on” tobacco and drank native distillation from the demijohn that Colby took down from its place on a rafter. Yet the host was filling each tranquilly flowing 135 minute with the intensive planning of a hospitality that was, like Macbeth’s, to end in murder.
Spurrier would sleep in an alcovelike room which could be locked from the outside. Back through the brush was a spot of quicksand where a body would leave no trace. One thing only troubled the planning brain. He wished he could learn just who knew of his guest’s coming here; just what precautions that guest had taken before embarking on such a venture.
From outside came a shout, interrupting these reflections, and Sim was at once on his feet facing the front door, with a surreptitious hand inside his shirt, and one eye covertly watching Spurrier, even as he looked out. A snarl, too, drew his lips into an unpleasant twist.
The Easterner put down to mountain caution the amazing swiftness with which the other had come from his hulking proneness to upstanding alertness. But with equal rapidity, Sim’s pose relaxed into ease and he shouted a welcome as the door darkened with a figure physically splendid in its spare strength and commanding height.
Spurrier rose and found himself looking into a face with most engaging eyes and teeth that flashed white in smiling.
For a moment as the newcomer gazed at Sim Colby his expression mirrored some sort of surprise and his lips moved as if to speak, but Spurrier could not see, because Colby’s back was turned, the warning glance that shot between the two, and the big fellow’s lips closed again without giving utterance to whatever he had been on the point of saying—something to do with eyes that had mystifyingly changed their color.
“Mister Spurrier, this hyar’s Sam Mosebury,” announced the host. “Mebby ye mout of heered tell of him.”