I had my revolver under my pillow. If I could reach it! I looked up to the small red eyeballs of the Chinaman.
They were insane, glaring, full of the wild, unreasoning lust to kill.
Some instinct moved me to speak.
"You were dead, I heard. I never had your wife while you were alive."
"Liar! Liar! You shall pay me in blood."
His hand with the knife in it twisted itself round in my grip. I felt my uplifted arm losing its force. What was draining my strength? That stream coming softly from my shoulder.
I lifted myself, trying to throw him backwards. My arm suddenly bent at the elbow and his hand with the knife in it zigzagged downwards very near to my throat. Age and feebleness had disappeared from him. He was strong now with the strength of insanity and of that blind leaping fury that glared out of his distorted face. There was a sudden struggle as he dropped on my chest, then with my hand still locked on his wrist we rolled together onto the floor.
A moment and we were up on our feet and he had forced me backwards to the bed. I felt my strength was going, but I still clung with a steel-like clutch to his wrist and kept the pointed knife at bay. As he bent me backwards on to the bed near the pillow, I took my right hand from his arm, snatched the revolver from under the pillow, thrust it into his face between the eyes, and fired.
He fell forwards, a great hole torn in his forehead, from which a river of blood poured, joining the bright ribands and with them making a sea of crimson.
I looked across him to where Suzee lay motionless.
"Suzee," I said, my breath almost dying in my throat.