She also remembered thinking that Bob had taken a desperate chance in
shooting at Taggart when she was so close to him, and she had a vivid
recollection of Taggart releasing her and staggering back without
uttering a sound. She caught a glimpse of his face as he sank to the
floor; there was a gaping hole in his forehead and his eyes were set
and staring with an expression of awful horror and astonishment. Then
the kitchen darkened, she felt the floor rising to meet her, and she
knew no more.
CHAPTER XXIII
FOR THE ALTARS OF HIS TRIBE
The first sound that Betty heard when consciousness began to return to
her was a loud pounding at the kitchen door.
She had fallen to the floor just beneath the shelf on which the lamp
sat, and she raised herself on an elbow and looked around. At first
she did not remember what had happened, and then she saw Taggart, lying
face upward on the floor near her, the frightful hole in his forehead,
and she shuddered as recollection in a sickening flood came to her.
Bob, dear Bob, had not failed her.
She got up, trembling a little, breathing a prayer of thankfulness,
shrinking from the Thing that lay on the floor at her feet with its
horror-stricken eyes staring straight up at the ceiling, making her way
to the kitchen door, for the pounding had grown louder and more
insistent, and she could hear a voice calling hoarsely to her.
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