A flame sprang to the Professor's eyes, but the horror in Mary's quelled it, and he only shrugged his shoulders.
"You do not answer," Cockney hissed. "You have at least the common sense to make no denial. There have been terrible things happen in lonely places out here, but nothing so bad as this, you dirty cad."
He faced his wife, his chest heaving and falling.
"Go to your room. I don't want witnesses."
But Mary Aikens had reached the limit of her subservience. She stood before him unfalteringly and glared back into his furious eyes.
"Very well!" He laughed recklessly. "Perhaps it's better so. Perhaps it'll do you good to see me twist the rotten life from him—with these fingers—these fingers."
He held before him his great hands, the fingers crooked like claws. His eyes seemed to protrude, and his teeth were bare like a beast's.
"She'll hear the screams from that big soft throat of yours, you hound, and your dying gasps. And I'll laugh—I'll laugh!"
He crouched, the crooked fingers thrust before him.
Professor Bulkeley had not moved since Cockney entered. Slowly now he removed his spectacles and laid them on the table.