rom his cheeks.

My brother spoke again.

"There were four of us after that letter, as you knew, Grundt, and three
of us are dead. But you never got me. I was the fourth man, the unknown
quantity in all your elaborate calculations ... and it seems to me I
spoiled your reckoning ... I and this brother of mine ... an amateur at
the game, Grundt!"

Still Clubfoot was silent, but I noticed a bead of perspiration tremble
on his forehead, then trickle down his ashen cheeks and drop splashing
to the floor.

Francis continued in the same deep, relentless voice.

"I never thought I should have to soil my hands by ridding the world of
a man like you, Grundt, but it has come to it and you have to die. I'd
have killed you in hot blood when I first came in but for Jack and
Herbert and the others ... for their sake you had to know who is your
executioner."

My brother raised the pistol. As he did so the man on the floor, by a
tremendous effort of strength, rose erect to his knees, flinging me
headlong. Then there was a hot burst of flame close to my cheek as I lay
on the floor, a deafening report, a thud and a sickening gurgle.

Something twitched a little on the ground and then lay still.

We rose to our feet together.

"Des," said my brother unsteadily, "it seems rather like murder."

"No, Francis," I whispered back, "it was justice!"

CHAPTER XX

CHARLEMAGNE'S RIDE

The hands of the clock pointed to a quarter past twelve. Funny, how my
eyes kept coming back to that clock! There was a smell of warm gunpowder
in the room, and the autumn sunshine, struggling feebly through the
window, caught the blue edges of a little haze of smoke that hung lazily
in the air by the desk in the corner. How close the room was! And how
that clock face seemed to stare at me! I felt very sick....

Lord! What a draught! A gust of icy air was raging in my face. The room
was still swaying to and fro....

I was in the front seat of a car beside Francis, who was driving. We
were fairly flying along a broad and empty road, the tall poplars with
which it was lined scudding away into the vanishing landscape as we
whizzed by. The surface was terrible, and the car pitched this way and
that as we tore along. But Francis had her well in hand. He sat at the
wheel, very cool and deliberate and very grave, still in his officer's
uniform, and his eyes had a cold glint that told me he was keyed up to
top pitch.

We slackened speed a fraction