Lola started forward with flaming eyes and anguished face.
“You—you?” she gasped. “You were so ignoble as to do that?”
“The accursed brute!” shouted Vauvenarde. “Yes, I did it. I wish I had burned out his entrails.”
Anastasius sprang at him like a tiger cat. I had a quick vision of the dwarf clinging in the air against the other's bulky form, one hand at his throat, and then of an incredibly swift flash of steel. The dwarf dropped off and rolled backwards, revealing something black sticking out of Vauvenarde's frock-coat—for the second I could not realise what it was. Then Vauvenarde, with a ghastly face, reeled sideways and collapsed in a heap on the ground.
CHAPTER XV
Of what happened immediately afterwards I have but a confused memory. I remember that Lola and I both fell on our knees beside the stabbed man, and I remember his horrible staring eyes and open mouth. I remember that, though she was white and shaky, she neither shrieked, went into hysterics, nor fainted. I remember rushing down to the manager; I remember running with him breathlessly through obscure passages of the hotel in search of a doctor who was attending a sick member of the staff. I remember the rush back, the doctor bending over the body, which Lola had partially unclothed, and saying:
“He is dead. The blade has gone straight through his heart.”
And I have in my mind the unforgettable and awful picture of Anastasius Papadopoulos disregarded in a corner of the room, with his absurd silk hat on—some reflex impulse had caused him to pick it up and put it on his head—sitting on the floor amid a welter of documents relating to the death of the horse Sultan, one of which he was eagerly perusing.
After this my memory is clear. It was only the first awful shock and horror of the thing that dazed me.