"My treasure! My ownest own!"
Rose cowered from the cold malice in the legless man's voice, and from
the unearthly subdued excitement in his eyes.
"Sit there opposite me. Don't be afraid. Things are coming my way.
To-morrow I shall have a pair of legs. Think of that! Are you
thinking of it?"
She nodded.
The legless man wiped his mouth with the palm of his hand. "I told him,"
he said, "that she was a prisoner in this house. He said he would give
me his legs if I would let her go free. He wrote a note asking if she
was safe and sound. I sent it out to her place where she was all the
time, and of course she answered that she was safe and sound."
He chuckled, and his agate eyes appeared to give off sparks.
"But she," he went on, "has promised to marry me, if I will let _him_ go
free. They love each other, Rose. They love each other! But I'm not
jealous. It won't come to anything. First I will get his legs. Then, if
he lives, I will make him write to her that he _is_ sound and free. I
will tell her that he refused to sacrifice himself. That will make her
hate him, and then we'll be married and live happily ever after. But if
she breaks her word, why on the 15th of January she will be taken,
wherever she is, and brought here, and we--we _won't_ be married!" He
laughed a long, ugly laugh.
"What are you going to do with me?"
The legless man considered, "I'm afraid you'll be too jealous to have
about, my pretty Rose. I'm afraid your love for me will turn into a
different feeling--in spite of the beautiful new legs that I shall have.
In short, my dear, knowing women as I do, you are one of my greatest
problems. If I could be sure that you wouldn't give anything away before
the 15th--after that it wouldn't matter."
"Are you leading up to the announcement that you are going to kill me?"
She looked him straight in the eyes, and began to shiver as if she was
very cold.
"Wouldn't that be best," he asked, "for everybody concerned?"
"I swear to God I won't give anything away," she said.
He continued to smile in her face. "I could do it for you," he said, "so
delicately--so painlessly--with my hands--and your troubles would be
all over."
He took her slender white neck between the palms of his great hairy
hands and caressed it. She did not shrink from his touch.
"Rose," he said presently and with the brutal and tigerish quality gone
from his voice, "you're brave. But I know women too well. I don't trust
you. If you'd screamed then or shown fear in any way, you'd be dead
now. After the 15th you shall do what you please with your life.
Meanwhile, my dear, lock and key for yours."
"You'll come to see me sometimes?"
"After to-night, I shall be laid up for a while, growing a pair of legs.
Later I'll look in, now and then. How about a little music, before you
retire to your room for the next few months? I'll tell you a secret. I'm
nervous about to-night, and frightened. A little Beethoven? to soothe
our nerves? the Adagio from the Pathétique?"
He stumped beside her, holding her hand as a child holds that of its
nurse; but for a different reason.
That night, securely locked in her own room next to his, she slept at
last from sheer weariness. And she dreamed that he was playing to her,
for her--the Adagio, and then the "Funeral March of a Hero."