lands and races. He lay
with his right arm thrown carelessly over the coverlets, and his left
arm hidden. Given any assassin who is not of superlative quality, he
will be on his guard as to the disclosed right arm, and will not trouble
himself about the hidden left. The door opened. Somebody came gliding
in. The somebody was breathing too heavily. 'A poor show of an
assassin,' Sarrasin could not help thinking. His nerves were now all
abrace like the finest steel, and he could observe a dozen things in a
second of time. 'If I couldn't do without puffing like that, I'd never
join the assassin trade!' Then a crouching figure came to the bedside
and looked over him, and took note, as he had expected, of the
outstretched right arm, and stooped over it, and ranged beyond it and
kept out of its reach, and then lifted a knife; and then Sarrasin let
out a terrible left-hander just under the assassin's chin, and the
assassin tumbled over like a heavy lump on the carpet of the floor, and
Sarrasin quietly leaped out of bed and took the knife out of his palsied
hand and gently turned on the light.

'Let's have a look at you,' he said, and he turned the fallen man over.
In the meanwhile he had thrust the knife under the pillow, and he held
the revolver comfortably ready at the forehead of the reviving murderer.
He studied his face. 'Hello,' he quietly said, 'so it is _you_!'

Yes, it was the wretched Saffron Hill Sicilian of St. James's Park.

The Sicilian was opening his eyes and beginning vaguely to form a faint
idea of how things had been going.

'Why, you poor pitiful trash!' Sarrasin murmured under his breath, 'is
this the whole business? Are you and your ladies' slipper knife going to
run this whole machine? I don't believe a bit of it. Look here; tell us
your whole infernal plot, or I'll blow your brains out--at least as many
as you have, which don't amount to much. Do you feel that?'

He pressed the barrel of his revolver hard on to the Sicilian's
forehead. Under other conditions it might have felt cool and refreshing.
The touch _was_ cool and refreshing certainly. But the Sicilian, even in
his bewildered condition, readily recognised the fact that the cool
touch of the iron was evidently to be followed by a distressing
explosion, and he could only whine feebly for mercy.

For a second or two Sarrasin was fairly puzzled what to do. It would be
no trouble to him to drive or drag this wretched Sicilian into the room
where