group of five. He still waited. There was an interval of silence; again the drum of approaching feet. He peered—and then he glided out into the centre of the alley and faced Jennings.
The guard stopped in the middle of a step; and the two men stood there alone in the desert alley, in the wan light of morning, facing each other, looking into each other’s eyes.
The guard was half-dressed, his shirt open on his hairy chest, his suspenders hanging behind. His eyes narrowed, then widened; a flicker of light for an instant sprang into them, then died at once, leaving them as of old, lidless, opaque, white-gray; and his sallow face showed no emotion, though slowly, like an invisible blush, a dull threat rose in it. 9009 red-barred, stood with coarse-shod feet close together, bending slightly forward from the waist, his revolver at the end of his arm, held with crooked elbow close to his ribs; and in his face, gray with the prison pallor, his two eyes glowed like fires at the bottom of two caves.
They stood thus, it seemed long, motionless.
