He halted, and surveyed Anthony with a lowered, searching curiosity, clenching with a strained and surprising force the knob of a black stick. Anthony met his scrutiny with the salutation of youth and the road; but the other made no reply; his countenance was as blank as though no word had been spoken. Then a sudden flicker of hot light burned in the dull depths of his gaze, his worn face quivered with a swift malignancy, an energy of suspicion, of hatred, that touched Anthony's heart with a cold finger of fear.
“What's your name?” he demanded, his entire being strained in an agony of attention.
Anthony informed him with scrupulous exactitude.
He seemed, for a moment, to doubt Anthony's identity; then the fire died, his eyes grew blank; his grasp relaxed on the stick, and, bent, dogged, he continued on his way.
The repellent contraction of Anthony's heart expanded in a light and careless curiosity, youthful contempt mingled with the gayety of his morning mood, and he hastened his steps until he had again overtaken his inquisitor.
“That's a good cane you've got,” he observed of the stout shaft and rounded head.
Its owner grasped it by the lower end, and swung the head against his hand. “Lead,” he pronounced somberly. “It would crumble your skull like an egg.”
Again fear stirred vaguely in Anthony: the entire absence of emotion in the sanguinary, the dull, matter-of-fact voice were inhuman, tainted with madness; the total detachment of those deliberate words had been appalling.
“I thought,” he continued, “that you might have been Alfred Lukes, but you're too young.” As he pronounced that name his grasp tightened whitely about the lead knob. The conviction seized Anthony that it was fortunate he was not the individual in question.
“You want Alfred?” he asked in an attempted jocularity.