Momentarily the shock of the assault staggered the gambler, and as he
gave ground, reeling, P. Sybarite closed one set of sinewy fingers
tight round his right wrist, and with the other seized and wrested the
revolver away. The incident was history in a twinkling: P. Sybarite
sprang back, armed, the situation reversed.

Recovering, Penfield threw him a cry of envenomed spite, and in one
stride left the room. He was turning up the stairs, three steps and an
oath at a bound, by the time P. Sybarite gained the threshold and sped
his departing host with a reminder superfluously ironic:

"The Bizarre at seven--don't forget!"

A breathless imprecation dropped to him from the head of the
staircase. And he chuckled--but cut the chuckle short when a heavy and
metallic clang followed the disappearance of the gambler. The iron
door upstairs had closed, shutting off the second floor from the lower
part of the house, and at the same time consigning P. Sybarite to the
mercies of the police as soon as they succeeded in battering down the
front door.

Now he harboured no whim to figure as the sole victim of the raid--to
be arrested as a common gambler, loaded to the guards with cash and
unable to give any creditable account of himself.

"Damn!" said P. Sybarite thoughtfully.

The front doors still held, though shaking beneath a shower of
axe-strokes that filled the house with sonorous echoes.

At his feet, immediately to the left of the lounge door, yawned the
well of the basement stairway. And one chance was no more foolhardy
than another. Like a shot down that dark hole he dropped--and brought
up with a bang against a closed door at the bottom. Happily, it wasn't
locked. Turning the handle, he stumbled through, reclosed the door,
and intelligently bolted it.

He was now in a narrow and odorous corridor, running from front to
rear of the basement. One or two doors open or ajar furnished all its
light. Trying the first at a venture, P. Sybarite discovered what
seemed a servant's bedroom, untenanted. The other introduced him to a
kitchen of generous proportions and elaborate appointments--cool,
airy, and aglow with glistening white paint and electric light;
everything in absolute order with the exception of the central table,
where sat a man asleep, head pillowed on arms folded amid a disorder
of plates, bottles and glasses--asleep and snoring lustily.

P. Sybarite pulled up with a hand on the knob, and blinked with
surprise--