On the table, amid the papers, lay his golden wig and black mask, and on the floor in the centre of the room, his back and breast of blackened steel and his sword.
It needed but little shrewdness to guess those parchments before him to be legal documents touching the Canaples estates, and his occupation that of casting up exactly what profit he would reap from his infamous work of betrayal.
So intent was the hound upon his calculations that my cautious movements passed unheeded by him as I got astride of the window ledge.

It was only when I swung my right leg into the room that he turned his head, but before his eyes reached me I was standing upright and motionless within the chamber.
I have seen fear of many sorts writ large upon the faces of men of many conditions--from the awe that blanches the cheek of the boy soldier when first he hears the cannon thundering to the terror that glazes the eye of the vanquished swordsman who at every moment expects the deadly point in his heart.

But never had I gazed upon a countenance filled with such abject ghastly terror as that which came over St.Auban's when his eyes met mine that night.
He sprang up with an inarticulate cry that sank into something that I can but liken to the rattle which issues from the throat of expiring men.

For a second he stood where he had risen, then terror loosened his knees, and he sank back into his chair.

His mouth fell open, and the trembling lips were drawn down at the corners like those of a sobbing child; his cheeks turned whiter than the lawn collar at his throat, and his eyes, wide open in a horrid stare, were fixed on mine and, powerless to avert them, he met my gaze--cold, stern, and implacable.
For a moment we remained thus, and I marvelled greatly to see a man whose heart, if full of evil, I had yet deemed stout enough, stricken by fear into so parlous and pitiful a condition.
Then I had the explanation of it as he lifted his right hand and made the sign of the cross, first upon himself, then in the air, whilst his lips moved, and I guessed that to himself he was muttering some prayer of exorcising purport.