“A murderer in intention only at present. I am going to do a murder, and I want you to witness it.”
Good heavens! I looked at the stranger; I met his terrible wild eyes, and in a moment it flashed upon me that I was in the presence of a madman.
I started from my chair, and was about to rush to the bell and call for help, but the stranger put his left hand on my shoulder and kept me in my seat, while he drew his right hand from his coat pocket, and something glittered in the lamplight. Oh, horror! a bright, new, large, six-chambered revolver!
“Be still, be silent,” he said, almost in a whisper, “or you are a dead man.”
“something glittered in the lamplight.”
I need hardly say that I was quiet enough after this, and sat grasping my chair arms with both hands, and staring at the stranger, perhaps with my hair standing on end.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” the dreadful man went on, “unless I can get nobody better to kill. But I mean to kill someone to-night, and I want you to see me do it. You must come with me out into the streets, and go about with me until we find somebody worth killing. You must keep very quiet, utter no cry, give no alarm, excite no suspicion. Otherwise I shall shoot you dead on the spot. I would not mind killing you, the author of so many stories of crime, but I would rather slay someone of higher social position, and leave you to live and record the deed.”
I reflected that I should prefer this arrangement myself, but, still better, I would rather get out of the whole horrible business altogether. But the madman, as I regarded him, was imperative.
“Put on your hat and coat and come with me quietly,” he said. “Make no noise or I fire.”