Part 4 (1/2)

In a measure I was prepared for this. I told myself that we were in the heart of a great city, in daylight, with the twentieth century setting of a fifteen-story office building. Were I to put my head out of the window a thousand hurrying people on Market Street would hear my call.

Yet I knew that I might as well be alone with him on a desert island for all the help that could reach me. I knew, too, that he was not bluffing.

What he said he would do, that he would do.

My face can on occasion be wooden.

”Interesting, if true,” I retorted coolly.

”And absolutely true. Make no mistake about that, Mr. Sedgwick.”

His hand rested on the back of the chair for a support. My eyes looked straight into the blue barrel of his weapon. It was a ticklish moment. I congratulate myself that my nerves were in good condition. My fingers played a tattoo upon a sheet of paper on my desk. Beneath that page of office stationery lay the map he wanted.

”One moment, captain. This is not Russia. Have you considered that the freedom of my country carries with it disadvantages? You would probably be hanged by the neck till you were dead.”

His mood had changed, but I knew he was not a whit less dangerous because the veneer of suave mockery masked the savagery of the Slav.

”Not at all. The unwritten law, my friend. I find you insulting my cousin and the hot blood in me boils. I avenge her. Regrettable, of course. Too hasty, perhaps. But--oh well, let bygones be bygones.”

In one breath he had tried and acquitted himself.

”And do you think that I would agree to your accursed lies?” his cousin asked, white as new-fallen snow.

”Let us hope so. Otherwise I should have to base my action upon a construction less creditable to you. The point is that I shall not hesitate to carry out my promise. We can arrange the details later, my dear. Come, Mr. Sedgwick! Choose!”

”You coward!” flashed his cousin in a blaze of scorn.

”Not at all, dear Evie. All point of view, I a.s.sure you. Mr. Sedgwick has told you that I take a sporting chance of being scragged. I haven't the slightest ill feeling, but--I want what I want. Have you decided, sir?”

He was scarcely two yards from me, but neither his keen gaze nor the point of the automatic revolver wandered for a fraction of a second from me. There was not a single chance to close with him. I was considering ignominious surrender when Miss Wallace saved my face.

”Can he give you what he hasn't got?” she cried out, her natural courage and her contempt struggling with her fear for me.

”So he hasn't it, eh?” There was a silence before he went on: ”But it is in this room somewhere. You have it or he has it. Now, I wonder which?”

He spoke softly, as if to himself, without the least trace of nervousness or pa.s.sion. ”Yes, that's the riddle. Which of you?”

His eyes released me long enough to shoot a questioning glance at her, for from my face he could read nothing.

”If you have it, Evie, my cousin, you will perhaps desire to turn it over to me for safe keeping. It will be better, I think.”

”For you or for me?”

He laughed noiselessly, with the manner peculiar to him of having some private source of amus.e.m.e.nt within.

”Would you shoot me if I didn't agree with you?” she continued.

”My dear cousin,” he reproved. From his air one might have judged him a pained and loving father.

”Then what will you do?”