He slippered his way across the floor to get a stool for her. But when he had lifted the stool from the floor in his shaking hands, she marked with a quick leap of the heart that he had put himself between her and the door, and that, with the possession of the stool, his looks were altered. The heavy block wavered in his grasp and he seemed to pant and stagger under its weight. But there was an ugly light in his eyes as he sidled nearer and nearer to her; a light that meant murder. She was sure that he was going to leap upon her. And she remembered that no one, no one knew where she was, no one had seen her enter the house. She had only her own strength to look to, only her own courage and coolness, if she would escape this creature.
“Put down that stool!” she said.
“Eh?”
“Put down that stool!” she repeated, firmly. And she kept her eyes on him, resisting the fatal temptation to glance at door or window. “Do you hear me? Put down that stool!”
He hesitated, but her glance never wavered. And slowly and unwillingly he obeyed. Shaking as with the palsy, and with his mouth fallen open—so that he looked more imbecile and less human than ever—he relinquished the stool.
She drew a deep breath.
“Now,” she said bravely, though she was conscious that the perspiration had broken out on her brow, “tell me at once where he is?”
But the old miser, though his will had yielded to hers, did not answer. He seemed to be shaken by his defeat, and to be at once feeble and furious. Glaring askance at her, he tottered to the settle on the hearth and sat down on it, breathing heavily.
“Curse her! Curse her! Curse her!” he gibbered low, but audibly. And he licked his lips and gnashed his toothless gums at her in impotent rage. “Curse her! Curse her!” The firelight, now rising, now falling, showed him sitting there, mopping and mowing, like some unclean Eastern idol; or, again, masked his revolting ugliness.
The girl thought him horrible, thought it all horrible. She felt for an instant as if she were going to faint. But she had gained the victory, she had mastered him, and she would make one last attempt to attain her object.