The last word died on her lips. The door of the shed-room suddenly opened and Mary stood before her.
CHAPTER XXII. DELIVERANCE
The first dim noises of the tragedy in the living-room Mary's stupefied senses had confused with a nightmare which she had been painfully fighting.
The torch in Nance's hand had flashed through a crack into her face once. It was the flame of a revolver in the hands of a thief in Jim's den in New York. She merely felt it. Her eyes had been gouged out and she was blind. A gang of his coarse companions were holding a council, cursing, drinking, fighting. Jim had sprung between two snarling brutes and knocked the revolver into the air. The flame had scorched her face.
With an oath he had slapped her.
“Get out, you damned little fool!” he growled. “You're always in the way when you're not wanted. Nobody can ever find you when there's work to be done——”
“But I can't see, Jim dear,” she pleaded. “I do not know when things are out of place——”
“You're a liar!” he roared. “You know where every piece of junk stands in this room better than I do. I can't bring a friend into that door that you don't know it. You can hear the swish of a woman's skirt on the stairs four stories below——”
“I only asked you who the woman was who came in with you, Jim——”