the same time bringing down the
men who had gone to the most distant room in the house for their own
security.

Several minutes passed during which the burly Servian struck his matches
and took account of his prisoner; and meanwhile Armitage lay perfectly
still, his arms fast numbing from the rough clasp of the stalwart
servant's legs. There was nothing to be gained by a struggle in this
position, and he knew that the Servian would not risk losing him in the
effort to summon the odd pair who were bent over their papers at the top
of the house. The Servian was evidently a man of action.

"Get up," he commanded, still in rough German, and he rose in the dark
and jerked Armitage after him. There was a moment of silence in which
Armitage shook and stretched himself, and then the Servian struck another
match and held it close to a revolver which he held pointed at Armitage's
head.

"I will shoot," he said again in his halting German.

"Undoubtedly you will!" and something in the fellow's manner caused
Armitage to laugh. He had been caught and he did not at once see any safe
issue out of his predicament; but his plight had its preposterous side
and the ease with which he had been taken at the very outset of his quest
touched his humor. Then he sobered instantly and concentrated his wits
upon the immediate situation.

The Servian backed away with a match upheld in one hand and the leveled
revolver in the other, leaving Armitage in the middle of the kitchen.

"I am going to light a lamp and if you move I will kill you," admonished
the fellow, and Armitage heard his feet scraping over the brick floor of
the kitchen as he backed toward a table that stood against the wall near
the outer door.

Armitage stood perfectly still. The neighborhood and the house itself
were quiet; the two men in the third-story room were probably engrossed
with the business at which Armitage had left them; and his immediate
affair was with the Servian alone. The fellow continued to mumble his
threats; but Armitage had resolved to play the part of an Englishman who
understood no German, and he addressed the man sharply in English several
times to signify that he did not understand.

The Servian half turned toward his prisoner, the revolver in his left
hand, while with the fingers of his right he felt laboriously for a lamp
that had been revealed by the fitful flashes of the matches. It is not an
easy matter to light a lamp when you have only one