Dulcie, rising from her chair, sorted the mail, sleepily tucking each letter and parcel into its proper pigeon-hole. There was a thick letter for Barres. This she held in her left hand, remembering his request that she call him up when the last mail arrived.
This she now prepared to do—had already reseated herself, her right hand extended toward the telephone, when a shadow fell across the desk, and the Prophet turned, snarled, struck, and fled.
At the same instant grimy fingers snatched at the letter which she still held in her left hand, twisted it almost free of her desperate clutch, tore it clean in two at one violent jerk, leaving her with half the letter still gripped in her clenched fist.
She had not uttered a sound during the second’s struggle. But instantly an ungovernable rage blazed up in her at the outrage, and she leaped clean over the desk and sprang at the throat of the one-eyed man.
His neck was bony and muscular; she could not compass it with her slender hands, but she struck at it furiously, driving a sound out of his throat, half roar, half cough.
“Give me my letter!” she breathed. “I’ll kill you 157 if you don’t!” Her furious little hands caught his clenched fist, where the torn letter protruded, and she tore at it and beat upon it, her teeth set and her grey Irish eyes afire.
Twice the one-eyed man flung her to her knees on the pavement, but she was up again and clinging to him before he could tear free of her.
“My letter!” she gasped. “I shall kill you, I tell you—unless you return it!”
His solitary yellow eye began to glare and glitter as he wrenched and dragged at her wrists and arms about him.
“Schweinstück!” he panted. “Let los, mioche de malheur! Eh! Los!—or I strike! No? Also! Attrape!—sale gallopin!——”