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sudden hysteria of madness she rushed forward as though to strike the
Englishman. Smith-Oldwick dropped back a few steps and leveled his pistol upon
her. Mad though she must have been, she evidently was not so mad but what she
had connected the loud report, the diminutive weapon, and the sudden death of
the man in whose house she dwelt, for she instantly desisted and quite as
suddenly as it had come upon her, her homicidal mood departed.
Again the vacuous, imbecile smile took possession of her features, and her voice,
dropping its harshness, resumed the soft, well-modulated tones with which she
had first addressed him. Now she attempted by signs to indicate her wishes, and
motioning Smith-Oldwick to follow her she went to the hangings and opening
them disclosed the alcove. It was rather more than an alcove, being a fair-sized
room heavy with rugs and hangings and soft, pillowed couches. Turning at the
entrance she pointed to the corpse upon the floor of the outer room, and then
crossing the alcove she raised some draperies which covered a couch and fell to
the floor upon all sides, disclosing an opening beneath the furniture.
To this opening she pointed and then again to the corpse, indicating plainly to the
Englishman that it was her desire that the body be hidden here. But if he had
been in doubt, she essayed to dispel it by grasping his sleeve and urging him in
the direction of the body which the two of them then lifted and half carried and
half dragged into the alcove. At first they encountered some difficulty when they
endeavored to force the body of the man into the small space she had selected for
it, but eventually they succeeded in doing so. Smith-Oldwick was again
impressed by the fiendish brutality of the girl. In the center of the room lay a
blood-stained rug which the girl quickly gathered up and draped over a piece of
furniture in such a way that the stain was hidden. By rearranging the other rugs
and by bringing one from the alcove she restored the room to order so no outward
indication of the tragedy so recently enacted there was apparent.
These things attended to, and the hangings draped once more about the couch
that they might hide the gruesome thing beneath, the girl once more threw her
arms about the Englishman's neck and dragged him toward the soft and
luxurious pillows above the dead man. Acutely conscious of the horror of his
position, filled with loathing, disgust, and an outraged sense of decency, Smith-
Oldwick was also acutely alive to the demands of self-preservation. He felt that he
was warranted in buying his life at almost any price; but there was a point at
which his finer nature rebelled.
It was at this juncture that a loud knock sounded upon the door of the outer
room. Springing from the couch, the girl seized the man by the arm and dragged
him after her to the wall close by the head of the couch. Here she drew back one
of the hangings, revealing a little niche behind, into which she shoved the
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