e did not try this time
to soften his footfalls--he did not care who heard him.

He tried the door. Locked. He shook it, and rattled it. No response,
but his straining ears caught the sound of light footfalls without.

He pounded upon the door, shouted threats, demands, challenges. He was
in the mood to flog the whole vile brood of this Pension Spulvedo.

He resorted to the method that had brought him freedom once before that
night--he lifted his foot and drove his boot against the door. And, as
before, the response was immediate.

A peremptory voice was raised in the other room.

"Be quiet, you, een there! Eef you be not quiet, I feex you!"

A well-remembered voice! That greasy villain of a saloonkeeper was out
there! It was Spulvedo who had smote him on the jaw. Martin redoubled
his blows on the door.

"Stop! _Santa Maria_, eef you not stop, I shoot!"

Martin kicked away. The door, of flimsy enough construction, seemed on
point of giving way. Then, there happened in such rapid sequence as to
seem simultaneous, several things.

There was an ear-splitting crash, a splintering of wood, a hot streak
passing so close to Martin's head it scorched, a tinkle of broken glass
from the window behind him, a smell of burnt gunpowder.

Martin stood on one leg, like a stork, his free foot suspended for the
kick he did not deliver. There was a queer sinking feeling in that
inward organ that received his food. He stared at a little hole in the
door panel, just above his head--a little bullet-hole that glowed
yellow with the light from the other room. The man had shot through
the door at him!

"Eef you not stop the keek, I shoot lower!" came the voice.

Martin sat down quickly upon the floor. Then, on second thought, he
crawled into the nearest corner and crouched against the wall.

To be shot at, to have Death's hot breath scorch one's very hair, might
very well daunt a person of more tumultuous antecedents than Martin
Blake. To a young man whose chief occupation in life has been the
warming of an office chair, such an experience is apt to prove
unnerving. It spoke well of the stuff Martin was made of that he was
not overly frightened. But Martin was certainly a bit shaken.

He suddenly discovered there was a vast difference between braving
death in spirit in the pages of a book, and braving death in person in
a locked upstairs room of a dubious and isolated boozing den. It was
all very well for, sa