He had studied
them intently, ranging from one to another and back again, and I
could see that there was uncertainty in his mind, and bepuzzlement.
"Well?" I finally broke the silence.
He took the pipe from his mouth and said simply, "I do not
understand."
He smoked on again, and again removed the pipe, using it to point
at the POLICE GAZETTE illustration.
"That picture - what does it mean? I do not understand."
I looked at the picture. A man, with a preposterously wicked face,
his right hand pressed dramatically to his heart, was falling
backward to the floor. Confronting him, with a face that was a
composite of destroying angel and Adonis, was a man holding a
smoking revolver.
"One man is killing the other man," I said, aware of a distinct
bepuzzlement of my own and of failure to explain.
"Why?" asked Sitka Charley.
"I do not know," I confessed.
"That picture is all end," he said. "It has no beginning."
"It is life," I said.
"Life has beginning," he objected.
I was silenced for the moment, while his eyes wandered on to an
adjoining decoration, a photographic reproduction of somebody's
"Leda and the Swan.
Pages:
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199