Ericson and Hamilton were waiting. Perhaps if they had heard any
noise they would be round in a moment. But was this the plot? Was this
the whole of the plot? This poor pitiful trumpery attempt at
assassination--was this all that the reactionaries of Gloria and of
Orizaba could do? 'Out of the question,' Sarrasin thought.

'I think I had better finish you off,' he said to the Sicilian, speaking
in a low, bland tone, subdued as that of a gentle evening breeze.
'Nobody really wants you any more. I don't care to rouse the house by
using my revolver for a creature like you. Just come this way,' and he
dragged him with remorseless hand towards the bed. 'I want to get at
your own knife. That will do the business nicely.'

Honest Sarrasin had not the faintest idea of becoming executioner in
cold blood of the hired Sicilian stabber. It was important to him to see
how far the Sicilian stabber's stabbing courage would hold out--whether
there were stronger men behind him who could be grappled with in their
turn. He still held to his conviction, 'We haven't got the whole plot
out yet. Anybody could do this sort of thing.'

'Don't kill me!' faintly murmured the wretched assassin.

'Why not? Just tell me all, or I'll kill you in two seconds,' Sarrasin
answered, in the same calm low voice, and, gripping the Sicilian solidly
round the waist, he trailed him towards the bed, where the knife was.

Then there came a flare and splash and blaze of yellowish red light
across the eyes of Sarrasin and his captive, and in a moment a noise as
fierce as if all the artillery of Heaven--or the lower deep--were let
loose at once. No words could describe the devastating influence of that
explosion on the ears and the nerves and the hearts of those for whom it
first broke. Utter silence--that is, the suspension of all faculty of
hearing or feeling or thinking--succeeded for the moment. Sight and
sound were blown out, as the flame of a candle is blown out by an
ordinary gunpowder explosion. Then the sudden and complete silence was
succeeded by a crashing of bells in the ears, by a flashing of furnaces
in the eyes, by a limpness of every limb, a relaxation of every fibre,
by a longing to die and be quiet, by a craving to live and get out of
the noise, by an all unutterable struggle between present blindness and
longed-for sight, present deafness and an impatient, insane thirst to
hear what was going on, between the faculties momentarily disordered an