He pressed the barrel of his revolver hard on to the Sicilian's forehead. Under other conditions it might have felt cool and refreshing. The touch was cool and refreshing certainly. But the Sicilian, even in his bewildered condition, readily recognised the fact that the cool touch of the iron was evidently to be followed by a distressing explosion, and he could only whine feebly for mercy.
For a second or two Sarrasin was fairly puzzled what to do. It would be no trouble to him to drive or drag this wretched Sicilian into the room where Ericson and Hamilton were waiting. Perhaps if they had heard any noise they would be round in a moment. But was this the plot? Was this the whole of the plot? This poor pitiful trumpery attempt at assassination—was this all that the reactionaries of Gloria and of Orizaba could do? 'Out of the question,' Sarrasin thought.
'I think I had better finish you off,' he said to the Sicilian, speaking in a low, bland tone, subdued as that of a gentle evening breeze. 'Nobody really wants you any more. I don't care to rouse the house by using my revolver for a creature like you. Just come this way,' and he dragged him with remorseless hand towards the bed. 'I want to get at your own knife. That will do the business nicely.'
Honest Sarrasin had not the faintest idea of becoming executioner in cold blood of the hired Sicilian stabber. It was important to him to see how far the Sicilian stabber's stabbing courage would hold out—whether there were stronger men behind him who could be grappled with in their turn. He still held to his conviction, 'We haven't got the whole plot out yet. Anybody could do this sort of thing.'
'Don't kill me!' faintly murmured the wretched assassin.
'Why not? Just tell me all, or I'll kill you in two seconds,' Sarrasin answered, in the same calm low voice, and, gripping the Sicilian solidly round the waist, he trailed him towards the bed, where the knife was.
Then there came a flare and splash and blaze of yellowish red light across the eyes of Sarrasin and his captive, and in a moment a noise as fierce as if all the artillery of Heaven—or the lower deep—were let loose at once. No words could describe the devastating influence of that explosion on the ears and the nerves and the hearts of those for whom it first broke. Utter silence—that is, the suspension of all faculty of hearing or feeling or thinking—succeeded for the moment. Sight and sound were blown out, as the flame of a candle is blown out by an ordinary gunpowder explosion. Then the sudden and complete silence was succeeded by a crashing of bells in the ears, by a flashing of furnaces in the eyes, by a limpness of every limb, a relaxation of every fibre, by a longing to die and be quiet, by a craving to live and get out of the noise, by an all unutterable struggle between present blindness and longed-for sight, present deafness and an impatient, insane thirst to hear what was going on, between the faculties momentarily disordered and the faculties wildly striving to grasp again at order. And Sarrasin began to recover his reason and his senses, and, brave as he was, his nerves relaxed when he saw in the instreaming light of the morning—the electric light had been driven out—that he was still gripping on to the body of the Sicilian, and that half the wretched Sicilian's head had been blown away. Then everything was once more extinguished for him.
But in that one moment of reviving consciousness he contrived to keep his wits well about him. 'It was not the Sicilian who did that,' he said to himself doggedly.