"Thanks; I prefer to stand," he answered, gruffly.
The single eye was fixed on the man opposite in a steady blaze, following every step and every movement in silence.
Gordon took his place by Overman"s side, thrust his big thumbs into his vest at the armpits, and looked off into s.p.a.ce.
"It"s no use, Mark, for us to mince words," he began, in even, clear tones. "I understand the situation perfectly."
"Then the solution should be easy under your code," the banker dryly remarked.
"All I ask of you now," Gordon continued, quietly, "as my best friend, is to let my wife alone. Is that a reasonable request?"
"No," was the emphatic answer. "Did I seek your wife? Yet nothing could have wrung from me the secret of my love had you not flung the challenge in my face again and again; and even then my love for you sealed my lips until she broke the spell to-day with words that cannot be unsaid."
Gordon"s face and voice softened.
"Granted, Mark, I"ve been a fool. I know better now. I appeal to your sense of honour and our long friendship. Let this scene end it. Let us return to the old life and its standards."
The big neck straightened.
"Then go back," he flashed, in tones that cut like steel, "to the wife of your youth and the mother of your children!"
Gordon"s fist clenched; he was still a moment, and when he spoke his voice was like velvet.
"It"s useless to bandy epithets, or to argue, Mark. I don"t reason about this thing. I only feel. My pa.s.sion is very simple, very elemental. It flouts logic and reason. This woman is mine. I have paid the price, and I will kill the man who dares to take her. Do you understand?"
The banker gave a sneering laugh, and twisted the muscles of his mouth.
"Yes, I understand, and I"m not fainting with alarm. You will be a preacher and a poser to the end."
"I have appealed to your principles and your sense of honour first,"
Gordon repeated, in a subdued voice.
The one eye was closed with a smile.
"Principles! Sense of honour! What principles? What sense of honour?
I agree that, under the old view of marriage as a divine sacrament and a great social ordinance, sacrifice of one"s desires for the sake of humanity might be n.o.ble. But in this paradise into which you have thrust me, with an invitation on your own door for all the world to enter and contest your position, and with you yourself shouting from the housetop freedom and fellowship---Sense of honour?
Rubbish!"
"I can see," snapped Gordon, "that one such beast as you is enough to transform heaven into h.e.l.l."
Overman slowly pulled his moustache, and a grin pushed his nose upward.
"Exactly. I am the one odd individual your scheme overlooked--a normal human being with the simplest rational instincts, a clear brain and the muscle big enough to enforce a desire."
"The muscle test is yet to come," Gordon coldly interrupted.
The banker shrugged his shoulders.
"I suppose so. And you know, Frank, the fear of man is an emotion I have never experienced."
Gordon bent quickly toward him, his face quiet and pale, and said in m.u.f.fled accents:
"Well, you who have never feared man, listen. Get out of this house to-night, give up my wife, never speak to her again or cross my path, or else--" a pause--"I am going to disarm you, bend your bulldog"s body across my knee by an art of which I am master, close your jaw with this fist on your throat, and break your back inch by inch. Will you go?"
Overman surveyed the questioner with scorn.
"When the woman who loves me tells me to go. This is her house!"
he coolly sneered.
Again the voice opposite sank to velvet tones.
"Very well, we are face to face without disguise, beast to beast.
You haven"t the muscle to take her. She is mine. I gave for her the deathless love of a wife, two beautiful children, a name, a career, a character, and the life of the man who gave me being, who died with a broken heart. For her I turned my back upon the poor who looked to me for help, forgot the great city I loved, overturned G.o.d"s altars, scorned heaven and dared the terrors of h.e.l.l. Do you think that I will give her up? I own her, body and soul. I"ve paid the price."
[Ill.u.s.tration: "Driving his great fingers into his throat."]
He paused a moment, quivering with pa.s.sion. "I know," he went on, "I was a fool floundering in a bog of sentiment. But you--one-eyed brute--you were never deceived about anything. You set your lecherous eye on her from the first and determined to poison her mind and take her from me."
"And I will take her," came the fierce growl from the depths of his throat, "and lift her from the mire into which you have dragged her peerless being."
The man opposite gave a quick, nervous laugh.
"Well, I, who have dreamed the salvation of the world and lost my own soul, may sink to-night, but, old boy"--he paused and laughed hysterically--"I"ll pull down with me into h.e.l.l as I go one Wall Street banker!"
"Talk is cheap," Overman hissed. "Make the experiment. You"re keeping a lady waiting."
Gordon stepped quickly to the desk and picked up two ivory-handled daggers with keen ten-inch blades, used as paper knives, and handed one to Overman.
"These little toys," he said, playfully, "were a wedding present from my wife on our second anniversary."
"Which wife?" snarled the big, sneering mouth.
Gordon went on meditatively.
"They are the finest Italian steel--sharp medicine for friends to take and give, but it will cure our ills. I never quite understood before what you meant by the fighting instinct when I used to watch you fasten those little devilish points on your Game chickens. I know now. I feel it throb in every nerve and muscle. The impulse to kill you is so simple and so sweet, it would be a crime against nature to deny it."
Overman threw his head to one side, frowned and peered at the man before him curiously.
"Do you ever get tired of preaching? The articulation of wind is a strange mania!"
"Pardon me if I"ve tired you," came the answer in mellow tones.
"You"ll need a long rest after to-night, and you"ll get it."
Gordon locked the doors, placed the blower over the flickering embers in the grate, and put his hand on the electric switch.
"I am going to put this light out for the sake of the comradeship and chivalry we once held in common. I could kill you at one blow from that blind side of your head. I"ll fight you fair. That is a bow to the higher law in the preliminary ritual of nature. But down below, in these muscles, throb forces older than the soul, that link us in kinship to the tiger and the wolf"--his voice sank to a dreamy monotone. "You sneaked into my home in the dark to rob me of my own. In the dark, we will settle on the price. I paid for this treasure an immortal soul. It"s worth as much to you."
He turned the switch, and then darkness and silence that could be felt and tasted--only the thrash of the storm against the blinds without.