His instant's glimpse of that face astounded, stunned, stupefied him.
He could not have seen that man! The fact was impossible! He must
have been mad; his mind must have become unreliable to let him even
imagine it. Then came the sound of the voice--the voice of the man
whose face he had seen! It was he! And, in place of the paralysis of
the first instant, now a wild, savage throe of passion seized Eaton;
his pulses leaped so it seemed they must burst his veins, and he gulped
and choked. He had not filled in with insane fancy the features of the
man whom he had seen; the voice witnessed too that the man in the dark
by the wall was he whom Eaton--if he could have dreamed such a fact as
now had been disclosed--would have circled the world to catch and
destroy; yet now with the destruction of that man in his power--for he
had but to aim and empty his automatic pistol at five paces--such
destruction at this moment could not suffice; mere shooting that man
would be petty, ineffectual. Eaton's fingers tightened on the handle
of his pistol, but he held it now not as a weapon to fire but as a dull
weight with which to strike. The grip of his left hand clamped onto
the short steel bar, and with lips parted--breathing once, it seemed,
for each heartbeat and yet choking, suffocating--he leaped forward.
At the same instant--so that he could not have been alarmed by Eaton's
leap--the man who had been working moved his torch, and the light fell
upon Eaton.
"Look out!" the man cried in alarm to his companion; with the word the
light of the torch vanished.
The man toward whom Eaton rushed did not have time to switch off his
light; he dropped it instead; and as Eaton sprang for him, he crouched.
Eaton, as he struck forward, found nothing; but below his knees, Eaton
felt a man's powerful arms tackling him; as he struggled to free
himself, a swift, savage lunge lifted him from his feet; he was thrown
and hurled backwards.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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