voice level and calm,
his eyes intent and deadly. "Put up your hands or I fire."

CHAPTER VII. QUESTION AND ANSWER

Dunn obeyed promptly.

There was that about this little fat, smiling man and his unsmiling eyes
which proclaimed very plainly that he was quite ready to put his threat
into execution.

For a moment or two they stood thus, each regarding the other very
intently. Dunn, his hands in the air, the steady barrel of the other's
pistol levelled at his heart, knew that never in all his adventurous
life had he been in such deadly peril as now, and the grotesque
thought came into his mind to wonder if there were room for two in that
packing-case in the attic.

Or perhaps no attempt would be made to hide his death since, after all,
it is always permissible to shoot an armed burglar.

The clock on the stairs began to strike the hour, and he wondered if he
would still be alive when the last stroke sounded.

He did not much think so for he thought he could read a very deadly
purpose in the other's cold grey eyes, nor did he suppose that a man
with such a secret as that of the attic upstairs to hide was likely to
stand on any scruple.

And he thought that if he still lived when the clock finished striking
he would take it for an omen of good hope.

The last stroke sounded and died away into the silence of the night.

The revolver was still levelled at his heart, the grim purpose in the
other's eyes had not changed, and yet Dunn drew a breath of deep relief
as though the worst of the danger was past.

Through his mind, that had been a little dulled by the sudden
consciousness of so extreme a peril, thought began again to race with
more than normal rapidity and clearness.

It occurred to him, with a sense of the irony of the position, that
when he entered this house it had been with the deliberate intention
of getting himself discovered by the inmates, believing that to show
himself to them in the character of a burglar might gain him their
confidence.

It had seemed to him that so he might come to be accepted as one of them
and perhaps learn in time the secret of their plans.

The danger that they might adopt the other course of handing him over to
the police had not seemed to him very great, for he had his reasons for
believing that there would be no great desire to draw the attention of
the authorities to Bittermeads for any reason whatever.

But the discovery he had made in the attic changed al