easy when he saw the three of us. But he
won't. He doesn't want to--and that's the dreadful fact. And--and--only
look at him now!"

* * * * *

His fascinated gaze had coasted back to the face on the cushions. It
might have been cut from tan marble, impassive and stern, and we saw
what he meant--though perhaps not as vividly as he saw--the wretched
incongruous tragedy of such a face in such a setting.

"So this is the end of your grand scheme!" said Captain Raff bitterly.

Well, you see, it came rather rough on a superior young optimist. For
the very first time in his life, I suppose, Sutton found himself called
to account without a chance either to smile or to sulk, to palter or to
play at clever tricks. Whatever his share in the unhappy business had
been--and we had never fully fathomed it, you remember--he was facing
the result of that folly without the possibility of disguise or excuse
or easy escape. Here was actual, physical hell to equal Wickwire's own
preaching--the murky depth of it. And here was Wickwire himself,
condemned to the dreariest fate ever devised by unamusing devils. And
who to blame?...

What he suffered we had a guess even then. Being the sort of chap he
was, he fought a very pretty little fight with himself in that
moment--which we might have guessed as well. His face was gridironed,
studded with sweat, and his hands clenched and opened. He turned here
and there, seeking the careless word or the flippant gesture, some
relief to an intolerable sense of guilt. But writhe as he liked, his
darting glances always painfully returned to the still victim on the
charpoy.

The Chinese touched his arm....

"No," he quavered. "No--no, by gum, _no_! It's not the end. Keep off of
me!" Like a man who clears himself of a vileness, he slung Li Chwan
across the room. "And you--" he cried to us "--hoist the chief up out of
that, and lively. There's a way yet if we take the straight of it. Grab
him!"

We responded--just as we had hesitated before--to some subtle quality
behind the words, and while we were gathering the limp body Sutton
himself was laying wide hold on the draperies across the wall. They
ripped and swayed, swirled down about him so that he stood waist deep
wrestling with figurative monsters until the whole blue screen tore away
and revealed the glass partition which closed the end of the gallery.
Solid at the base, it was latticed above with small panes, and, t