The monosyllabic challenge bit through the silence of the room. It was hard, cruel, and full of unmistakable menace.
The man at the desk leaped from his seat and faced about, glaring in the direction whence the voice had proceeded.
The Man Leaped from His Seat and Faced About
He faced the accusing figure of Alexander Hendrie with a desperate, hunted look in his widening eyes, and, curiously, in the horror of the moment, amid the turmoil of alarm that filled his heart and brain, he found himself surveying the intruder with a closeness of observation only to be expected in moments of perfect tranquility.
His eyes caught the man's mane of hair, slightly graying at the temples. He noted the cold gleam of the gray eyes leveled straight at his. He realized the meaning of the harsh, tightly compressed mouth, and the gripping muscles of the wide, bull-dog jaw. There was a peculiar hunch to the man's broad shoulders, which suggested nothing so much as an animal crouching to spring. All these things he saw, and read, and he knew that a merciless fury was raging behind the calm mask of this husband of his mother.
In a flash his own nerve steadied, and a desperate calmness succeeded the first shock of horror.
"Well?" he retorted, and moistened his parching lips.
To an on-looker, undisturbed by the tension of the moment, a curious realization must inevitably have occurred. It was the extraordinary likeness existing between these two. The older man displayed the maturity of his years in his increasing bulk, but the likeness was scarcely lessened by it. There was the same hair, the same cast of feature. The younger man's eyes were blue and his height was greater, but the breadth of shoulder, the bone and muscle were similar.