He said never a word. She turned to me:
"Come, my husband, we will go."
I was opening the door to leave him forever. Suddenly I heard a step coming up the stairs, a heavy, hurried tread. I looked down a moment, then I pushed her back into the room.
"Be prepared, Berna," I said quietly; "here comes Locasto."
CHAPTER XXIII
There we waited, Garry and I, and between us Berna. We heard that heavy tread come up, up the creaking stairway, stumble a moment, then pause on the landing. There was something ominous, something pregnant in that pause. The steps halted, wavered a little, then, inflexible as doom, on they came towards us. The next instant the door was thrown open, and Locasto stood in the entrance.
Even in that brief moment I was struck by the change in him. He seemed to have aged by twenty years. He was gaunt and lank as a starved timber wolf; his face was hollow almost as a death's head; his hair was long and matted, and his eyes burned with a strange, unnatural fire. In that dark, aquiline face the Indian was never more strongly revealed. He limped, and I noticed his left hand was gloved.
From under his bristling brows he glared at us. As he swayed there he minded me of an evil beast, a savage creature, a mad, desperate thing. He reeled in the doorway, and to steady himself put out his gloved hand. Then with a malignant laugh, the fleering laugh of a fiend, he stepped into the room.
"So! Seems as if I'd lighted on a pretty nest of love-birds. Ho! ho! my sweet! You're not satisfied with one lover, you must have two. Well, you are going to be satisfied with one from now on, and that's Jack Locasto. I've stood enough from you, you white-faced jade. You've haunted me, you've put some kind of a spell on me. You've lured me back to this land, and now I'm going to have you or die! You've played with me long enough. The jig's up. Stand out from between those two. Stand out, I say! March out of that door."