Without one word of warning the Irishman stepped forward and struck the
negro brutally in the face. The boy reeled, whimpering. Two more blows
delivered with murderous ferocity silenced him altogether. He collapsed
like a broken puppet, insensible on the floor, his face a curious ashen
colour beneath its glossy skin of brown.
XX
RIPOSTE
The drizzle had grown thicker, the night blacker, the early morning air
still more chill. But Lanyard was moving too swiftly to be affected by
this last circumstance; the first he anathematised with the perfunctory
bitterness of a skilled artisan who sees his work in a fair way to be
obstructed by elemental depravity. Another of his trade would have termed
such weather conditions ideal, and so might the Lone Wolf on an everyday
job; but the prospect of a footing rendered insecure by rain trebled the
hazards attending a plan of campaign that would brook neither revision nor
delay.
There was only one way to break into the house on Seventy-ninth Street;
this Lanyard had appreciated upon his first reconnaissance of the previous
afternoon.
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