Screwing up my courage, I fixed the man with my eye. I had never seen
such a horrible little eye as his. It was a sane eye, too. It radiated
a cold and ruthless sanity. It belonged not to a man who would kill
you wantonly, but to one who would not scruple to kill you for a
purpose, and who would do the job quickly and neatly, and not be found
out. Was he physically strong? Though he looked very wiry, he was
little and narrow, like his eyes. He could not overpower me by force,
I thought (and instinctively I squared my shoulders against the
cushions, that he might realise the impossibility of overpowering me),
but I felt he had enough `science' to make me less than a match for
him. I tried to look cunning and determined. I longed for a moustache
like his, to hide my somewhat amiable mouth. I was thankful I could
not see his mouth--could not know the worst of the face that was
staring at me in the lamplight. And yet what could be worse than his
eyes, gleaming from the deep shadow cast by the brim of his top-hat?
What deadlier than that square jaw, with the bone so sharply
delineated under the taut skin?

The train rushed on, noisily swaying through the silence of the night.
I thought of the unseen series of placid landscapes that we were
passing through, of the unconscious cottagers snoring there in their
beds, of the safe people in the next compartment to mine--to his. Not
moving a muscle, we sat there, we two, watching each other, like two
hostile cats. Or rather, I thought, he watched me as a snake watches a
rabbit, and I, like a rabbit, could not look away. I seemed to hear my
heart beating time to the train. Suddenly my heart was at a
standstill, and the double beat of the train receded faintly. The man
was pointing upwards...I shook my head. He had asked me in a low
voice, whether he should pull the hood across the lamp.