“You can’t do this to me and get away with it! It’s nonsense! This sort of thing doesn’t go in New York!”
Suddenly his mind grew coldly, terrible clear:
“No, you can’t get away with it!” he concluded aloud, in the calm, natural voice of conviction. “Your stunt is scaring women! You try to keep clear of men—you dirty, blackmailing German crook! I’ve got your number! You’re the ‘Watcher’!—you murderous rat! You’re afraid to shoot!”
It was plain that the spectacled man had not discounted anything of this sort—plain now, to Barres, that if, indeed, murder actually had been meant, it was not his own murder that had been planned with that big, blunt, silver-plated pistol, now wavering wildly before his eyes.
“I blow your face off!” whispered the stranger, beginning to back away again, and ghastly pale.
“Keep out of thiss! I am not looking for you. Get you back; step once again inside that door away!——”
But Barres had already jumped for him, had almost caught him, was reaching for him—when the man hurled the pistol straight at his face. The terrific impact of the heavy weapon striking him between the 214 eyes dazed him; he stumbled sideways, colliding with the wall, and he reeled around there a second.
But that second’s leeway was enough for the bespectacled stranger. He turned and ran like a deer. And when Barres reached the staircase the whitewashed hall below was still echoing with the slam of the street grille.
Nevertheless, he hurried down, but found the desk-chair empty and Soane nowhere visible, and continued on to the outer door, more or less confused by the terrific blow on the head.
Of course the bespectacled man had disappeared amid the noonday foot-farers now crowding both sidewalks east and west, on their way to lunch.