evolver lying on the top of the roll of carpet where
Deede Dawson had placed it.

The bullet, for Rupert was a man who seldom missed, struck the weapon
fair and whirled it, shattered and useless, to the floor. Deede Dawson,
whose hand had been already outstretched to seize it, drew back with
a snarl that was more like the cry of a trapped wolf than any sound
produced from human lips.

Still, Rupert did not speak. With the smoking pistol in his hand he
watched silently and steadily his helpless enemy who, for his part, was
silent, too, and very still, for he felt that doom was close upon him.

Yet he showed not the least sign of fear, but only a fierce and sullen
defiance.

"Shoot away, why don't you shoot?" he sneered. "Mind you don't miss. I
trusted you when I put my revolver down and I was a fool, but I thought
you would play fair."

Without a word Rupert tossed his pistol through the attic window.

They heard the tinkling fall of the glass, they heard more faintly the
sound of the revolver striking the outhouse roof twenty feet below and
rebounding thence to the paved kitchen yard beneath, and then all was
quiet again.

"I only need my hands for you," said Rupert softly, as softly as a
mother coos to her drowsy babe. "My hands for you."

For the first time Deede Dawson seemed to fear, for, indeed, there was
that in Rupert Dunsmore's eyes to rouse fear in any man. With a sudden
swift spring, Rupert leaped forward and Deede Dawson, not daring to
abide that onslaught, turned and ran, screaming shrilly.

During the space of one brief moment, a dreadful and appalling moment,
there was a wild strange hunting up and down the narrow space of that
upper attic, cumbered with lumber and old, disused furniture.

Round and round Deede Dawson fled, screaming still in a high shrill way,
like some wild thing in pain, and hard upon him followed Rupert, nor had
they gone a second time about that room before Rupert had Deede Dawson
in a fast embrace, his arms about the other's middle.

One last great cry Deede Dawson gave when Rupert seized him, and then
was silent as Rupert lifted him and swung him high at arm's length.

As a child in play sports with its doll, so Rupert swung Deede Dawson
twice about his head, round and round and then loosed him so that he
went hurling through the air with awful force, like a stone shot from a
catapult, clean through the window through which Rupert had the moment
before tossed his pisto