“If I strike her I strike you. Ask yourself whether or not I will strike.” 368
All the blood seemed to leave my heart; I straightened up with an effort.
“There are some murders,” I said, “that even you must recoil at.”
“I don’t think you appreciate me,” he replied, with a deathly smile.
He motioned toward the door with levelled weapon. I turned and entered the tea-room, and he locked the door from the outside.
The Countess, seated on the sofa, looked up as I appeared. She was terribly pale, but she smiled as my heavy eyes met hers.
“Is it to be farce or tragedy, monsieur?” she asked, without a tremor in her clear voice.
I could not have uttered a word to save my life. Speed, pacing the room, turned to read my face; and I think he read it, for he stopped short in his tracks. Jacqueline, watching him with blue, inscrutable eyes, turned sharply toward the window and peered out into the darkness.
Beyond the wall of the garden the fog, made luminous by the torches of the insurgents, surrounded the house with a circle of bright, ruddy vapor.
Speed came slowly across the room with me.