at you have made your way here, at some
personal inconvenience, I should say, to discuss the generosity of
my remuneration to the lady?" There was a tense silence and the
Captain continued in a low, almost purring voice, "You do not
appear, even now, to comprehend the thing you have done. I shall do
my best to make you comprehend--and before I have finished it may be
that I shall have a clearer explanation of this impulsive call. You
have no notion, Monsieur, how certain things unloose the tongue--but
you shall discover."

Billy saw his white teeth show in a deadly smile. Back of him a
dark, heavy figure appeared and the Captain, without turning his
head or moving his eyes or his gun from Billy, gave some rapid
directions in Turkish and the figure disappeared. It occurred to
Billy like a flash that from that secret passage where the figure
had appeared there was a panel into the room on the right and that
room had a door opening into the hall outside. The next moment he
felt the door behind him open.

Then he pulled the trigger of that gun in his pocket in which his
hand had been so lightly resting. The Captain seemed to fire the
same instant, but Billy had jumped aside as he shot his own gun and
he heard the bullet singing past his ear, and now, with his revolver
out of his pocket, he shot again with an aim so true that the other
man's right hand gave a spasmodic jerk and the revolver went
spinning to the ground.

Across the room he hurled himself, springing from the onslaught of
the assailant entering behind him, and thrusting the cursing Captain
from his path he leaped through the sliding panel. The lock clicked
home and he paused even in that moment of hammering pulses and
pounding heart to fumble in the darkness to shut that other panel
into the next room, remembering Fritzi's warning that those locks
needed a key to open them from within. The minute's delay for the
key would mean many minutes for him.

He stumbled against the tiny stairs that led to the tower room
through which Falconer had descended, but he did not dash up those
stairs for he heard the noise of feet overhead, as if returning from
pursuit, and he darted straight on through the long, narrow,
unlighted corridor, running like a hare.

At the other end he crashed against a half-open door and fell
headlong down a flight of stairs. From his astonished fingers the
revolver went clattering and though he picked himself up, battered
but unbroken, at