, Mr. John Sedgwick of San Francisco, United States
of America, that in the event you do not at once hand me that map I
shall blow the top of your head off!"

In a measure I was prepared for this. I told myself that we were in the
heart of a great city, in daylight, with the twentieth century setting
of a fifteen-story office building. Were I to put my head out of the
window a thousand hurrying people on Market Street would hear my call.

Yet I knew that I might as well be alone with him on a desert island for
all the help that could reach me. I knew, too, that he was not bluffing.
What he said he would do, that he would do.

My face can on occasion be wooden.

"Interesting, if true," I retorted coolly.

"And absolutely true. Make no mistake about that, Mr. Sedgwick."

His hand rested on the back of the chair for a support. My eyes looked
straight into the blue barrel of his weapon. It was a ticklish moment. I
congratulate myself that my nerves were in good condition. My fingers
played a tattoo upon a sheet of paper on my desk. Beneath that page of
office stationery lay the map he wanted.

"One moment, captain. This is not Russia. Have you considered that the
freedom of my country carries with it disadvantages? You would probably
be hanged by the neck till you were dead."

His mood had changed, but I knew he was not a whit less dangerous
because the veneer of suave mockery masked the savagery of the Slav.

"Not at all. The unwritten law, my friend. I find you insulting my
cousin and the hot blood in me boils. I avenge her. Regrettable, of
course. Too hasty, perhaps. But--oh well, let bygones be bygones."

In one breath he had tried and acquitted himself.

"And do you think that I would agree to your accursed lies?" his cousin
asked, white as new-fallen snow.

"Let us hope so. Otherwise I should have to base my action upon a
construction less creditable to you. The point is that I shall not
hesitate to carry out my promise. We can arrange the details later, my
dear. Come, Mr. Sedgwick! Choose!"

"You coward!" flashed his cousin in a blaze of scorn.

"Not at all, dear Evie. All point of view, I assure you. Mr. Sedgwick
has told you that I take a sporting chance of being scragged. I haven't
the slightest ill feeling, but--I want what I want. Have you decided,
sir?"

He was scarcely two yards from me, but neither his keen gaze nor the
point of the automatic revolver wandered for a fraction of a second from