9/23 Tavernake had led an uneventful life. Of the passions which breed murder and the desire to kill he knew nothing. He was dazed with the suddenness of it all. How could such a thing happen in the midst of London, in a thoroughfare only momentarily deserted, at the further end of which, indeed, were many signs of life! Then the thought of that knife made him shiver--blue glittering steel cutting the air like whipcord. He remembered the look in the assassin's face--horrible, an epitome of the passions, which seemed to reveal to him in that moment the existence of some other, some unknown world, about which he had neither read nor dreamed. |