"If you can't lie better than that you needn't try

again. Face about now, and march!"

I put new energy into my tone, and he turned and

walked before me down the corridor in the direction

from which he had come. We were, I dare say, a pretty

pair,-he tramping doggedly before me, I following at

his heels with his lantern and my pistol. The situation

had played prettily into my hands, and I had every intention

of wresting from him the reason for his interest

in Glenarm House and my affairs.

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"Not so fast," I admonished sharply.

"Excuse me," he replied mockingly.

He was no common rogue; I felt the quality in him

with a certain admiration for his scoundrelly talents-

a fellow, I reflected, who was best studied at the point

of a pistol.

I continued at his heels, and poked the muzzle of the

revolver against his back from time to time to keep him

assured of my presence,-a device that I was to regret a

second later.

We were about ten yards from the end of the corridor

when he flung himself backward upon me, threw his

arms over his head and seized me about the neck, turning

himself lithely until his fingers clasped my throat.

I fired blindly once, and felt the smoke of the revolver

hot in my own nostrils. The lantern fell from

my hand, and one or the other of us smashed it with our

feet.

A wrestling match in that dark hole was not to my

liking. I still held on to the revolver, waiting for a

chance to use it, and meanwhile he tried to throw me,

forcing me back against one side and then the other of

the passage.

With a quick rush he flung me away, and in the same

second I fired. The roar of the shot in the narrow corridor

seemed interminable. I flung myself on the floor,

expecting a return shot, and quickly enough a flash broke

upon the darkness dead ahead, and I rose to my feet,

fired again and leaped to the opposite side of the corridor

and crouched there. We had adopted the same tactics,

firing and dodging to avoid the target made by the flash

of our pistols, and watching and listening after the roar

of the explosions. It was a very pretty game, but destined

not to last long. He was slowly retreating toward

the end of the passage, where there was, I remembered,

a dead wall. His only chance was to crawl through an

area window I knew to be there, and this would, I felt

sure, give him into my hands.

After five shots apiece there was a truce. The pungent

smoke of the powder caused me to cough, and he

laughed.

"Have you swallowed a bullet, Mr. Glenarm?" he

called.




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