Page:The Clue of the Twisted Candle (1916).djvu/345

Presently John Lexman went on.

"He slipped from the bed and came across to meet me as I closed the door behind me.

"'Ah, Mr. Gathercole,' he said, in that silky tone of his, and held out his hand.

"I did not speak. I just looked at him with a sort of fierce joy in my heart the like of which I had never before experienced.

"'And then he saw in my eyes the truth and half reached for the telephone.

"But at that moment I was on him. He was a child in my hands. All the bitter anguish he had brought upon me, all the hardships of starved days and freezing nights had strengthened and hardened me. I had come back to London disguised with a false arm and this I shook free. It was merely a gauntlet of thin wood which I hadhad made for me in Paris.

"I flung him back on the bed and half knelt, half laid on him.

"'Kara,' I said, 'you are going to die, a more merciful death than my wife died.'