mad. But he had the revolver--hers. He blazed it
at arm's length, and missed. And that steadied me. I had smashed his
funny-bone against the rock before he could blaze again; the revolver
fell with a rattle, but without going off; in an instant I had it
tight, and the little swine at my mercy at last."

"You didn't show him any?"

"Mercy? With Faustina dead at my feet? I should have deserved none in
the next world if I had shown him any in this! No, I just stood over
him, with the revolver in both hands, feeling the chambers with my
thumb; and as I stood he stabbed at me; but I stepped back to that one,
and brought him down with a bullet in his guts.

"'And I can spare you two or three more,' I said, for my poor girl
could not have fired a shot. 'Take that one to hell with you--and
that--and that!'

"Then I started coughing and wheezing like the Count himself, for the
place was full of smoke. When it cleared my man was very dead, and I
tipped him into the sea, to defile that rather than Faustina's cave.
And then--and then--we were alone for the last time, she and I, in our
own pet haunt; and I could scarcely see her, yet I would not strike a
match, for I knew she would not have me see her as she was. I could
say good-by to her without that. I said it; and I left her like a man,
and up the first open-air steps with my head in the air and the stars
all sharp in the sky; then suddenly they swam, and back I went like a
lunatic, to see if she was really dead, to bring her back to life ...
Bunny, I can't tell you any more."

"Not of the Count?" I murmured at last.

"Not even of the Count," said Raffles, turning round with a sigh. "I
left him pretty sorry for himself; but what was the good of that? I
had taken blood for blood, and it was not Corbucci who had killed
Faustina. No, the plan was his, but that was not part of the plan.
They had found out about our meetings in the cave: nothing simpler than
to have me kept hard at it overhead and to carry off Faustina by brute
force in the boat. It was their only chance, for she had said more to
Stefano than she had admitted to me, and more than I am going to repeat
about myself. No persuasion would have induced her to listen to him
again; so they tried force; and she drew Corbucci's revolver on them,
but they had taken her by surprise, and Stefano stabbed her before she
could fire."

"But how do you know all that?" I asked Raffles, for his tale was going