If she had been in doubt before, one
glance at the hideous features set in death must have convinced
her that life was extinct, and with the realization there broke
from her lips peal after peal of mad, maniacal laughter as with her
little hands she beat upon the upturned face and breast of the dead
man. It was a gruesome sight from which the Englishman involuntarily
drew back-a gruesome, disgusting sight such as, he realized, might
never be witnessed outside a madhouse or this frightful city.
In the midst of her frenzied rejoicing at the death of the man,
and Smith-Oldwick could attribute her actions to no other cause,
she suddenly desisted from her futile attacks upon the insensate
flesh and, leaping to her feet, ran quickly to the door, where
she shot a wooden bolt into its socket, thus securing them from
interference from without. Then she returned to the center of the
room and spoke rapidly to the Englishman, gesturing occasionally
toward the body of the slain man. When he could not understand,
she presently became provoked and in a sudden hysteria of madness
she rushed forward as though to strike the Englishman. Smith-Oldwick
dropped back a few steps and leveled his pistol upon her. Mad though
she must have been, she evidently was not so mad but what she had
connected the loud report, the diminutive weapon, and the sudden
death of the man in whose house she dwelt, for she instantly desisted
and quite as suddenly as it had come upon her, her homicidal mood
departed.
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