lace in a worse-for-wear group, one nursing
a nosebleed; another feeling gingerly of a loose tooth; Blenheim himself
frankly raging, and decorated with a broad cut across his forehead and
a cheek that was rapidly taking on assorted shades of blue, green, and
black; and the redoubtable Mr. Schwartzmann, worst off of all, lying in
a heap, groaning at intervals, but apparently quite unaware of what was
going on.

My abrupt sally seemed transfixing. I might have been Medusa. I had a
welcome minute in which to contemplate the victims of my prowess and
to exult unchristianly in their scars. Then the tableau dissolved, the
three men sprang up, and I took action. As I emerged I had drawn out a
handkerchief and I now proceeded to raise and wave it.

"Well, Herr von Blenheim, I have come to parley with you," I announced,
"white flag and all."

He tried to look as if he had expected me, though it was obvious that he
hadn't. To give verisimilitude to the pretense, he even pulled out his
watch.

"I thought you would. You had just two minutes' grace," he commented,
watching me narrowly. "Suppose you come down. You have brought the
papers, I hope--for your own sake?"

"Oh, yes!" I assured him with all possible blandness. "I have brought
them. What else was there to do? You had us in the palm of your hand.
That door is old and worm-eaten; you could have crumpled it up like
paper. When we thought the situation over we saw its hopelessness at
once; so here I am."

"That is sensible," he agreed curtly, though I could see that he was
puzzled. Casting a baffled glance beyond me, he scanned the gallery
door. It by no means merited my description, being heavy, solid, almost
immovable in aspect. "Well, let's have the papers!" he said, with
suspicion in his tone.

I descended in a deliberate manner, casting alert eyes about me, for,
to use an expressive idiom, I was not doing this for my health. On the
contrary I had two very definite purposes; the first, which I could
probably compass, was to save Miss Falconer from further intercourse
with Blenheim and to conceal the presence of the wounded, helpless
Firefly from his enemies; the second, surprisingly modest, was to
make the four Germans prisoners and hand them over in triumph to the
gendarmes of the nearest town, Santierre.

I was perfectly aware of the absurdity of this ambition. I lacked
the ghost of an idea of how to set about the thing. But the general
craziness of events had u