'
While he was saying this, Beckwith had filled a half-pint glass
with brandy. At this moment, he threw the brandy at his face, and
threw the glass after it. Slinkton put his hands up, half blinded
with the spirit, and cut with the glass across the forehead. At
the sound of the breakage, a fourth person came into the room,
closed the door, and stood at it; he was a very quiet but very
keen-looking man, with iron-gray hair, and slightly lame.
Slinkton pulled out his handkerchief, assuaged the pain in his
smarting eyes, and dabbled the blood on his forehead. He was a
long time about it, and I saw that in the doing of it, a tremendous
change came over him, occasioned by the change in Beckwith, - who
ceased to pant and tremble, sat upright, and never took his eyes
off him. I never in my life saw a face in which abhorrence and
determination were so forcibly painted as in Beckwith's then.
'Look at me, you villain,' said Beckwith, 'and see me as I really
am. I took these rooms, to make them a trap for you. I came into
them as a drunkard, to bait the trap for you. You fell into the
trap, and you will never leave it alive. On the morning when you
last went to Mr. Sampson's office, I had seen him first. Your plot
has been known to both of us, all along, and you have been counter-
plotted all along. What? Having been cajoled into putting that
prize of two thousand pounds in your power, I was to be done to
death with brandy, and, brandy not proving quick enough, with
something quicker? Have I never seen you, when you thought my
senses gone, pouring from your little bottle into my glass? Why,
you Murderer and Forger, alone here with you in the dead of night,
as I have so often been, I have had my hand upon the trigger of a
pistol, twenty times, to blow your brains out!'
This sudden starting up of the thing that he had supposed to be his
imbecile victim into a determined man, with a settled resolution to
hunt him down and be the death of him, mercilessly expressed from
head to foot, was, in the first shock, too much for him.
Pages:
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37