opened the
door to them. "Mr. Mackenzie is expecting us, I think," said Dick
suavely, and made as if to enter.

Mrs. Fletcher looked at them suspiciously, more because it was her way
than because, in face of Dick's assumption, she had any doubts of their
right of entrance. "He didn't say that he expected anybody," she said.
"I can take your names up to him."

"Oh, thanks, we won't trouble you," said Dick. "We will go straight up.
First floor, as usual, I suppose?"

It was a slip, and Mrs. Fletcher planted herself in the middle of the
passage at once.

"Wait a moment," she said. "What do you mean by 'as usual'? Neither of
you have been in the house before. You won't go up to Mr. Mackenzie
without I know he wants to see you."

"Now, look here," said Dick, at once. "We are going up to Mr. Mackenzie,
and I expect you know why. If you try to stop us, one of us will stay
here and the other will fetch the policeman. You can make up your mind
at once which it shall be, because we've no time to waste."

"Nobody has ever talked to me about a policeman before; you'll do it at
your peril," she said angrily, still standing in the passage, but Dick
saw her cast an eye towards the door on her left.

"I'm quite ready to take the consequences," said Dick, "but whatever
they are it won't do you any good with other people in your house to
have the police summoned at half-past ten in the morning. Now will you
let us pass?"

She suddenly turned and made way for them. Dick went upstairs and Jim
followed him. The door of the drawing-room was opposite to them. "I'll
do the talking," said Dick, and opened the door and went in.

CHAPTER XVII

THE CONTEST

Mackenzie sprang up and stood facing them. His face had changed in a
flash. It was not at all the face of a man who had been caught and was
ashamed; it was rather glad. Even his ill-made London clothes could not
at that moment disguise his magnificent gift of virility. So he might
have looked--when there was no one to see him--face to face with sudden,
unexpected danger in far different surroundings, dauntless, and eager to
wrest his life out of the instant menace of death.

Dick had a momentary perception of the quality of the man he had to deal
with, which was instantly obliterated by a wave of contemptuous
dislike--the dislike of a man to whom all expression of feeling, except,
perhaps, anger, was an offence. He had looked death in the face too, but
not with that air