“Talk is cheap,” Overman hissed. “Make the experiment. You’re keeping a lady waiting.”
Gordon stepped quickly to the desk and picked up two ivory-handled daggers with keen ten-inch blades, used as paper knives, and handed one to Overman.
“These little toys,” he said, playfully, “were a wedding present from my wife on our second anniversary.”
“Which wife?” snarled the big, sneering mouth.
Gordon went on meditatively.
“They are the finest Italian steel—sharp medicine for friends to take and give, but it will cure our ills. I never quite understood before what you meant by the fighting instinct when I used to watch you fasten those little devilish points on your Game chickens. I know now. I feel it throb in every nerve and muscle. The impulse to kill you is so simple and so sweet, it would be a crime against nature to deny it.”
Overman threw his head to one side, frowned and peered at the man before him curiously.
“Do you ever get tired of preaching? The articulation of wind is a strange mania!”
“Pardon me if I’ve tired you,” came the answer in mellow tones. “You’ll need a long rest after to-night, and you’ll get it.”
Gordon locked the doors, placed the blower over the flickering embers in the grate, and put his hand on the electric switch.