“I only wanted to make sure,” he returned.
Something in the careful precision of his answer struck her with a swift sense of apprehension. She looked up at him and what she saw made her catch her breath convulsively. His face was ashen, the veins in his forehead standing out like weals, and his eyes gleamed like blue flame—mad eyes. His hands, hanging at his sides, twitched curiously.
“I’m sure now,” he said. “Sure. . . . Do you know what you’ve done? You’ve smashed up my life. Smashed it. June and I were happy enough till you came. Now we’ll never be happy again. I expect you’ve smashed other lives, too. But you won’t do it any more. I’m the last. Women like you are better dead!”
His great arms swung out and gripped her.
“No, don’t struggle. It wouldn’t be any good, you know.” He went on speaking very carefully and quietly, and while he spoke she felt his left arm tighten round her, binding her own arms down to her sides as might a thong, while his right hand slid up to the base of her throat. She writhed, twisting her body desperately in his grip. “Keep still. I’ve kissed you. And now I’m going to kill you. You’ll be better dead.”
There was implacable purpose in his strangely quiet, unhurried accents. Magda recognised it—recognised that death was very close to her. It would be useless to scream. Before help could come—if anyone heard her cries, which was unlikely—Dan would have accomplished what he meant to do.
In the last fraction of time these thoughts flashed through her mind. Her brain seemed to be working with abnormal clarity and speed. This was death, then—unavoidable, inevitable.
She felt Dan’s hand creep upward, closing round her throat. Quite suddenly she ceased to struggle and lay still in his grasp. After all, she didn’t know that she would much mind dying. Life was not so sweet. There would be pain, she supposed . . . a moment’s agony. . . .
All at once, Storran’s hands fell away from her passive, silent body and he stepped back. “I can’t do it!” he muttered hoarsely. “I can’t do it!”
For a moment the suddenness of her release left Magda swaying dizzily on her feet. Then her brain clearing, she looked across to where Dan Storran’s big figure faced her. The nonchalance with which she usually met life, and with which a few moments earlier she had been prepared to face inevitable death, stood by her now. A faint, quizzical smile tilted her mouth.