At such a distance it would be impossible to miss.
There was a curtain just behind him; Annister had noticed it upon entering. Now at his back it rippled suddenly along its length as if at the passage of a heavy body just behind. The lawyer smiled thinly.
“Ah, my friend,” he said, “it is so easy to be indiscreet! And one must meet force with force. This—it is theatrical, if you like—but—it is just a little demonstration of my—preparedness. I thought—you see....”
There came a sardonic flicker in the nearset eyes; the voice purred now in the semi-darkness like a cat’s:
“I must protect myself.... There are—reasons.... You see, I thought, for a moment, that you—ah—meditated a resort to—violence. And violence is something that I deplore, my friend; and here I am surrounded by violent men, ‘sudden and quick in quarrel,’ as the poet has it; sometimes they are difficult to control.”
Annister had himself in hand. The veiled threat with which the lawyer had ended bothered him not at all. Now, casually as it seemed, but with the lightning riposte of a duellist, his hand reached out; there came a sudden wrench, a twist, a snarling oath from Rook; and Annister, pocketing the pistol, smiled grimly now in answer.
“Now—‘we can talk better so’!” he mocked. “The balance of power, ha? Now, let me tell you something: You left the big town—for your health; that was three years ago, wasn’t it? I didn’t recognize you, but it was a pretty close shave, at that!”
He laughed, but there was a ring of menace in it. His hard eyes held the pale ones of the lawyer with a chill malevolence.
“Rook,” he said, low, “you’re as crooked as a ram’s-horn; you’re a bent twig; I wouldn’t trust you this side of hell further than I could see you, and not even then. Now—” his voice cracked suddenly in the thick silence like the cracking of a whip—“you had the infernal gall to send me—here—after you’d have accounted for me—by the left hand, ha?
“I left that window open, because, if you want to know, I was expecting something of the sort. And now—”