foamed and bubbled in him now as he stood impatiently rapping at the door, and it blazed in his eyes with a corrupt and fatal glee, a mad flaming exuberance, a focal intensity of triumph, joy, and hate.
He entered the room immediately as soon as Eugene opened the door: he went in briskly at his light corky step and immediately said briskly and jovially in his whispering thread of a voice: “Good evening! Are we all here? Is everyone well? Did someone say something?”—he looked round enquiringly, then, with a disappointed air, continued: “No? I thought someone spoke. Well, then, come in, Mr. Upshaw. Thank you, I will. Won’t you sit down? Yes, indeed!” He seated himself. “Will you have a drink? I should be delighted”—here he took the bottle, poured a stiff shot of whisky into a glass, and drank it at one gulp. When he had finished, he looked round more quietly until his gaze rested with a kind of evil temperance on his wife: “Hello, Martha,” he said casually and quietly. “How are you?” She did not answer and in a minute he repeated, still with his evil calm but with a more vicious intensity of tone, “Listen, you God-damned bitch!… When I ask you a question, you answer. How are you?”
“How did you get here?” she said.
“Oh!—Surprised to see me, is she?—Well, I tell you, darling, how it was. I was going to walk—I was going to walk, if necessary—now that just shows you how anxious I was to see you—I was going to walk the whole damned way from Denver, right over mountains and prairies and rivers and everything—but I didn’t have to. I found a train all ready to go, darling; it was waiting for me when I got there, so’Why walk?’I said. When I got to Kansas City I found an aeroplane waiting there, so I said,’Why ride when flying’s faster?’So that’s the way I got here, darling.”—He paused and drank again.
“How did you know where to find me?” asked Martha sullenly.
“Oh!” said Upshaw, lightly and gaily, “that was no trouble at all. Where should I find you, my dear? Where did I expect to find you? Why, right in the bedroom of my dear old pal, Mr. Robert Weaver, of course, I knew he’d look after you. I knew he wouldn’t leave an innocent young girl like you to wander around all alone in the city…. Hi, there, Robert,” he said cordially, lifting his hand in a salute of friendly greeting, as if noting Robert’s presence for the first time.
“How are you, boy? I’m glad to see you. You’ve been looking after my wife,
