“We’re flying to Paris in the morning.”
“You heard what I said!”
“And then to Stockholm.” She laughed sweetly and caressed his chin. “My little fat man.”
Something began to stir in him. His face grew pale. He knew what was happening. The hidden anger and revulsion and hatred in him were sending out faint pulses of thought. And the delicate telepathic web in her wondrous head was receiving the death impulse. The marionette. The invisible strings. He himself manipulating her body.
“Plump, odd little man, who once was so fair.”
“Don’t,” he said.
“Old while I am only thirty-one, ah, George, you were blind, working years to give me time to fall in love again. Don’t you think Leonard is lovely?”
He raised the gun blindly.
“Katie.”
“His head is as the most fine gold—” she whispered.
“Katie, don’t!” he screamed.
“His locks are bushy, and black as a raven.…His hands are as gold rings set with the beryl—”
How could she speak those words! It was in his mind, how could she mouth it!
“Katie, don’t make me do this!”
“His cheeks are as a bed of spices,” she murmured, eyes closed, moving about the room softly. “His belly is as bright ivory overlaid with sapphires. His legs are as pillars of marble—”
“Katie!” he shrieked.
“His mouth is most sweet—”
One shot.
“—this is my beloved—”
Another shot.
She fell.
“Katie, Katie, Katie!”
Four more times he pumped bullets into her body.
She lay shuddering. Her senseless mouth clicked wide and some insanely warped mechanism had caused her to repeat again and again, “Beloved, beloved, beloved, beloved, beloved…”
George Hill fainted.
* * *
He awakened to a cool cloth on his brow.
“It’s all over,” said the dark man.
“Over?” George Hill whispered.
The dark man nodded.