ing me; I knew neither myself nor the primitive impulses I
felt.

"If you lay a finger on Miss Falconer," I heard myself saying slowly, "I
swear I'll kill you."

Then through the crimson mist that enveloped me I saw Blenheim laugh.

"Come, Mr. Bayne," he taunted me, "remember our friend Schwartzmann.
This is your business, Miss Falconer, I take it. What are you going to
do?"

The girl flung her head back, and her eyes blazed as she answered him.

"You can torture me," she said scornfully. "You can kill me. But I will
never give you the papers; you may be sure of that."

CHAPTER XXI

IN THE DARK

I thought of a number of things in the ensuing thirty seconds, but they
all narrowed down swiftly to a mere thankfulness that I had been born.
Suppose I hadn't; or suppose I had not happened to stop at the St. Ives
Hotel and sail on the _Re d'Italia_; or that I had remained in Rome with
Jack Herriott instead of hurrying on to Paris; or had let my quest of
the girl end in the rue St.-Dominique instead of trailing her to Bleau.
If one of these links had been omitted, the chain of circumstance would
have been broken, and Miss Falconer would have sat here confronting
these four men alone.

It was extremely hard for me to believe that the scene was genuine.
The dark hall, the one wavering, flickering candle lighting only the
immediate area of our conference, the bound woman in the chair, the
watchful attitude of our captors. Mr. Schwartzmann's ready weapon--all
were the sort of thing that does not happen to people in our prosaic day
and age. It was like an old-time romantic drama; I felt inadequate,
cast for the hero. I might have been Francois Villon, or some such
Sothern-like incarnation, for all the civilized resources that I could
summon. There were no bells here to be rung for servants, no telephones
to be utilized, no police station round the corner from which to
commandeer prompt aid.

The most alarming feature of the affair, however, was the manner of
Franz von Blenheim, which was not so much melodramatic as businesslike
and hard. At Miss Falconer's defiance he looked her up and down quite
coolly. Then, turning in his seat, he began giving orders to his men.

"Schwartzmann," ran the first of these, "I want you to watch this
gentleman. He will probably make some movement presently; if he does,
you are to fire, and not to miss. And you"--he turned to the men by the
door--"pile some wood in the chimney-place an