spite to be followed by the deluge; for if
Blenheim had been ruthless before, what were his probable intentions
now?

"We have lost our candle in the fracas," I muttered lamely.

"It doesn't matter. I have another," she answered in a soft, unsteady
voice.

As she coaxed the light into being, I made a rapid survey. We were in a
room of gray stone, of no great size and quite bare of furnishing, save
for a few stone benches built into alcoves in the wall. The bareness
of the scene emphasized our lack of resources. As a sole ray of hope, I
perceived a possible line of retreat if things should grow too warm for
us, a door facing the one by which we had come in.

With all the excitement, I had forgotten Mr. Schwartzmann's bullet,
which, I have no doubt, had left me a gory spectacle. At any rate,
I frightened Miss Falconer when the candle-light revealed me. In
an instant she was bending over me, forcing me gently down upon a
particularly cold, hard bench.

"They shot you!" she was exclaiming. Her voice was low, but it held an
astonishing protective fierceness. "They--they dared to hurt you! Oh,
why didn't you tell me? Is it very bad?"

"No! no!" I protested, dabbing futilely at my forehead. "It isn't of
the least importance. I assure you it is only a scratch. In fact," I
groaned, "nobody could hurt my head; it is too solid. It must be ivory.
If I had had a vestige of intelligence, an iota of it, the palest
glimmer, I should have known from the beginning exactly who these
fellows were!"

She was sitting beside me now, bending forward, all consoling eagerness.

"That is ridiculous!" she declared. "How could you guess?"

"Easily enough," I murmured. "I had all the clues at Gibraltar. Why,
yesterday, on my way to your house in the rue St.-Dominique, I went over
the whole case in the taxi, and still I didn't see. I let the fellow
confide in me on the ship and warn me on the train and give me a final
solemn ultimatum at the inn last night and come on here to frighten you
and threaten you--when just a word to the police would have settled
him forever. By George, I can't believe it! I should take a prize at an
idiot show."

She laughed unsteadily.

"I don't see that," she answered. "Why should you have suspected him
when even the authorities didn't guess? You are not a detective. You are
a--a very brave, generous gentleman, who trusted a girl against all the
evidence and helped her and protected her and risked your life