foolery?" asked Poltavo, in a mixture of blind fear and
rage. They had unlocked the handcuffs and taken them off him, and now
for the first time Poltavo noticed that the curious bronze clamps on his
wrists were attached by thick green cords to a plug in the wall.

He shrieked aloud as he saw this, and the full horror of the situation
flashed upon him.

"My God," he screamed, "you are not going to kill me?"

Farrington nodded slowly.

"We are going to kill you painlessly, Poltavo," he said. "It was your
life or ours. We do not desire to cause you unnecessary suffering, but
here is the end of the adventure for you, my friend."

"You are not going to electrocute me?" croaked the man in the chair, in
a hoarse cracked voice. "Don't say that you are going to electrocute me,
Farrington! It is diabolical, it is terrible. Give me a chance of life!
Give me a pistol, give me a knife, but fight me fair. Treat me as you
will; hand me to the police, anything but this; for God's sake,
Farrington, don't do this!"

The doctor reached down and lifted a leather helmet from the floor and
placed it gently over the doomed man's head.

"Don't do it, Farrington." Poltavo's muffled voice came painfully from
behind the leather screen. "Don't! I swear I will not betray you."

Farrington made a little signal and the doctor walked to the wall and
placed his hand upon a black switch.

"I will not betray you," said the man in the chair in hollow tones.
"Give me a chance. I will not tell them anything that you----"

He did not speak again, for the black switch had been pressed down and
death came with merciful swiftness.

They stood watching the figure. A slight quivering of the hands and then
Farrington nodded and the doctor turned the switch over again.

Rapidly they unfastened the straps, and the limp thing which was once
human, with a brain to think and a capacity for life and love, slipped
out of the chair in an inanimate heap upon the ground.

So passed Ernesto Poltavo, an adventurer and a villain, in the prime of
his life.

Farrington looked down upon the body with sombre eyes and shrugged his
shoulders.

He had opened his mouth to speak and Fall had walked to the switchboard
and was about to put the deadly apparatus out of gear, when a sharp
voice made them both turn.

"Hands up!" it said.

The stone door, through which Poltavo had passed to his doom from the
corridor without, was wide open, and in the doorway stood T. B.