n't
feel that I can drink any more just yet! Maybe I will in a few minutes.'
We sat down, and I saw protruding from his hip pocket the butt end of a
revolver. If only I could get it! Determined to try, I edged slightly
towards him. He immediately drew away, a curious, furtive, bestial smile
lurking in the corner of his lips. I casually repeated the manoeuvre,
and he just as casually repeated his. Then I glanced at the window--the
door I knew was hopeless,--and it was iron barred. I gazed again at the
man, and his eyes grinned evilly as they met mine. Without a doubt he
meant to murder me. The ghastliness of my position stunned me. Even if I
shrieked for help, who would hear me save desperadoes, in all
probability every whit as ready as my companion to kill me.

"A hideous stupor now began to assert itself, and as I strained to keep
my lids from closing, I watched with a thrill of terror a fiendish look
of expectancy creep into the white, gleaming face of the stranger. I
realised, only too acutely, that he was waiting for me to fall asleep so
as the more conveniently to rob and murder me. The man was a murderer by
instinct--his whole air suggested it--his very breath was impregnated
with the sickly desire to kill. Physically, he was the ideal assassin.
It was strange that I had not observed it before; but in this light,
this yellow, piercing glare, all the criminality of his features was
revealed with damning clearness: the high cheek-bones, the light,
protruding eyes, the abnormally developed forehead and temporal regions,
the small, weak chin, the grossly irregular teeth, the poisonous breath,
the club-shaped finger-tips and thick palms. Where could one find a
greater combination of typically criminal characteristics? The man was
made for destroying his fellow creatures. When would he begin his job
and how?

"I am not narrow minded, I can recognise merit even in my enemies; and
though I was so soon to be his victim, I could not but admire the
thoroughly professional manner, indicative of past mastership, with
which he set about his business. So far all his plans, generated with
meteor-like quickness, had been successful; he was now showing how
devoted he was to his vocation, and how richly he appreciated the
situation, by abandoning himself to a short period of greedy, voluptuous
anticipation, fully expressed in his staring eyes and thinly lipped
mouth, before experiencing the delicious sensation of slitting my
windp