It was the eyes which froze all three spectators into a paralyzed horror. They were the color of Cub Sterling’s, except that they centered upon his own eyes with a blistering, venomous, consuming hate, and that hate was confirmed in the crooked, violent twist of the almost rigid lips.
The lips opened, the man gave his left shoulder the hysterical twist and drained the glass, but even with his head thrown back, his eyes bored into and scorched the brain of Cub Sterling, and held Matthew Higgins inert with horror.
It was Sally’s, “Peaches! I smell peaches!” that brushed past their fear.
“Cyanide!”
As Cub barked the word, the tall man stiffened gauntly, his eyes still intent upon Sterling’s; then his body, like a palm tree in a hurricane, cracked suddenly forward.
The medicine cabinet was within ten feet of the steps upon which Higgins, Cub and Sally stood, and the man fell so that his head just brushed the railing. His hands automatically spread through the railing and caught Sterling’s knee.
The fall threw his hair forward and Matthew Higgins snapped:
“Who is he?”
Cub’s eyes began disentangling themselves from the glassy vileness of the dead man’s stare. Matthew Higgins reached down and savagely yanked at the stiffening hands around Cub’s knees.
Sterling, his own hands gripping the railing for support, endeavored vainly to make his reeling mind bring his tortured eyes into focus.