Stampa’s expression changed instantly. Its meek sorrow yielded to a ferocity that was appalling. Already bent, he crouched like a wild beast gathering itself for an attack.
“Do you refuse?” he asked, in a low note of intense passion.
“Yes, curse you! And mutter your prayers in your own behalf. You need them more than I.”
Bower planted himself firmly, right in the gateway. He clenched his fists, and savagely resolved to batter this lunatic’s face into a pulp. He had a notion that Stampa would rush straight at him, and give him an opportunity to strike from the shoulder, hard and true. He was bitterly undeceived. The man who was nearly twenty years his senior jumped from the top of a low monument on to the flat coping stones of the wall. From that greater height he leaped down on Bower, who struck out wildly, but without a tithe of the force needed to stop the impact of a heavily built adversary. He had to change feet too, and he was borne to the earth by that catamount spring before he could avoid it. For a few seconds the two writhed in the snow in deadly embrace. Then Stampa remained uppermost. He had pinned Bower to the ground face downward. Kneeling on his shoulders, with the left hand gripping his neck and the right clutching his hair and scalp, he pulled back the wretched man’s head till it was a miracle that the spinal column was not broken.
“Now!” he growled, “are you content?”
There was no reply. It was a physical impossibility that Bower should speak. Even in his tempest of rage Stampa realized this, and loosened his grip sufficiently to give his opponent a moment of precious breath.
“Answer!” he muttered again. “Promise you will obey, you brute, or I crack your neck!”
Bower gurgled something that sounded like an appeal for mercy. Stampa rose at once, but took the precaution to close the gate, since they had rolled into the cemetery during their short fight.
“Saperlotte!” he cried, “you are not the first who deemed me helpless because of my crooked leg. You might have run from me, Marcus Bauer; you could never fight me. Were I at death’s door, I would still have strength left to throttle you if once my fingers closed round your throat.”
Bower raised himself on hands and knees. He cut an abject figure; but he was beyond all thought of appearances. For one dread moment his life had trembled in the balance. That glimpse of death and of the gloomy path beyond was affrighting. He would do anything now to gain time. Wealth, fame, love itself, what were they, each and all, when viewed from the threshold of that barrier which admits a man once and for ever?