“You’ve heard I’m fast with women, eh?” asked Dirk, after a pause.
“But Ynecita—”
“Why do you talk of her?” asked Dirk, irritably. “I never knew her.”
“Those marks of teeth on Ynecita’s arm—two sharp canines, sharp and hooked; barely scratching the skin—like fangs of a snake, Dirk—”
Tain Dirk’s hand crept to his lips, which were thin, red, and dry. The light in his eyes darkened from yellow to purple. Softly his blunt fingers began to drum his lips. Tat! tat! tat! But silent as a snake in grass.
“A curious thing about teeth, Dirk—you’re a sculptor; maybe you’ve observed it—a curious thing that no two are quite alike. We took prints, Dirk, of those marks in the arm of Ynecita—”
Dirk’s thin lips opened. His coarsely-formed, but marvelously sensitive, fingers felt the hardness of his teeth. That gesture was sly. At once he knew I’d seen him. He crouched back in his chair, his strong, broad head drawn in between his shoulders.
“Who are you?” he hissed.
Again the klirring of his fingertips—a dusty drumming.
“Why, I am only Jerry Hammer—a wanderer, and a soldier of bad fortune.”