But then he heard an unfamiliar sound, and it brought him up short.
His mother had screamed in earnest. He could hear her pleading, while
the man before her had become deathly silent.
Trembling with sudden fear and concern, he reached under the
floor-boards to the place where he kept the stolen pistol. Then ran
with it up the doubling stairway. Again the woman screamed, the sound
cut short by a dull gasp of pain. He lifted the latch and burst into
the room. . .too late.
His mother lay bleeding on the bed, her eyes wide with uncomprehending
horror. The long knife had started in her womb, and jerked upward with
a vicious pull. The man, fully clothed, stood watching her die. He
turned toward the frozen child, the bloodied knife poised, ready to
strike again.
But the young man was not his mother. With the instinctive ferocity
re-taught him by the streets and quays of London, he stiffened his arm
and fired. The murderer fell at his feet. At the age of ten, he had
killed his first man.
He did not wait for the Law to decide his fate: he had seen too much
of its handiwork.
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