“You're not going to move me, Helen,” he declared. “You might as well get that clear.”
“But I tell you it was my fault, Paul! I ran away with him!”
“All right,” answered the man, grimly. “I'll fix him so no other man's wife will ever run away with him.”
Her clamour continued more wildly than ever, until two other men came into the room. “Joe,” said Paul, to one of them, “take her down to the car and keep her there. Don't let her call for help—if anybody comes along, keep her quiet, keep your hand tight over her mouth.”
“Paul, you're a fiend!” shrieked the woman. “I'll kill you for this!”
“You're welcome to,” answered the man. “I shouldn't care—but I'm going to do this job before I die.” And he tore the woman's hands away from him, and by his stern anger he gave the other two men the necessary resolution. They carried her, half-fainting, out of the room.
All this time Jimmie Higgins had been standing like one turned to stone; and Lizzie had shrunk into a far corner of the room, all but paralysed with terror. Now the man turned to them. “My good people,” he said, “we want to borrow your room for a half-hour or so. We'll pay you well for it—enough to buy the whole house if you want to.”
“W—w—what are you goin' to do?” stammered Jimmie.
“We're going to teach a little fundamental morality to a young man whose education has been neglected,” replied the other. That somehow did not tell Jimmie very much, but he forebore to speak again, for never in all his life had he seen a man who conveyed to him the impression of such resistless force as this man. He was truly a superhuman creature, terrifying, panoplied in lightnings of wrath.
The door of the house opened again, and Lacey Granitch came in, with a man on each side holding him by the arms and a pair of handcuffs on his wrists. Of all the dreadful spectacles that Jimmie had seen that dreadful night, the worst was the face of the young master of the Empire Machine Shops. It was green—absolutely and literally green. His knees trembled so that he seemed about to sink to the floor, and his dark eyes were those of an animal in a trap.