"If you can't lie better than that you needn't try
again. Face about now, and march!"
I put new energy into my tone, and he turned and
walked before me down the corridor in the direction
from which he had come. We were, I dare say, a pretty
pair,-he tramping doggedly before me, I following at
his heels with his lantern and my pistol. The situation
had played prettily into my hands, and I had every intention
of wresting from him the reason for his interest
in Glenarm House and my affairs.
"Not so fast," I admonished sharply.
"Excuse me," he replied mockingly.
He was no common rogue; I felt the quality in him
with a certain admiration for his scoundrelly talents-
a fellow, I reflected, who was best studied at the point
of a pistol.
I continued at his heels, and poked the muzzle of the
revolver against his back from time to time to keep him
assured of my presence,-a device that I was to regret a
second later.
We were about ten yards from the end of the corridor
when he flung himself backward upon me, threw his
arms over his head and seized me about the neck, turning
himself lithely until his fingers clasped my throat.
I fired blindly once, and felt the smoke of the revolver
hot in my own nostrils. The lantern fell from
my hand, and one or the other of us smashed it with our
feet.
A wrestling match in that dark hole was not to my
liking. I still held on to the revolver, waiting for a
chance to use it, and meanwhile he tried to throw me,
forcing me back against one side and then the other of
the passage.
With a quick rush he flung me away, and in the same
second I fired. The roar of the shot in the narrow corridor
seemed interminable. I flung myself on the floor,
expecting a return shot, and quickly enough a flash broke
upon the darkness dead ahead, and I rose to my feet,
fired again and leaped to the opposite side of the corridor
and crouched there. We had adopted the same tactics,
firing and dodging to avoid the target made by the flash
of our pistols, and watching and listening after the roar
of the explosions. It was a very pretty game, but destined
not to last long. He was slowly retreating toward
the end of the passage, where there was, I remembered,
a dead wall. His only chance was to crawl through an
area window I knew to be there, and this would, I felt
sure, give him into my hands.
After five shots apiece there was a truce. The pungent
smoke of the powder caused me to cough, and he
laughed.
"Have you swallowed a bullet, Mr. Glenarm?" he
called.