the right hand, lifted his
hat with the right hand, offered the envelope with the right hand. There
was nothing to show that he was not a right-handed man.

"I wonder if you have anything against me personally?" inquired M. Paul.

"On the contrary," declared the other, "we admire you and wish you well."

"But you threaten my dog?"

"If necessary, yes."

"And my mother?"

"_If necessary_."

The decisive moment had come, not only because Coquenil's anger was stirred
by this cynical avowal, but because just then there shot around the corner
from the Avenue Montaigne a large red automobile which crossed the Champs
Elysees slowly, past the fountain and the tulip beds, and, turning into the
Avenue Gabrielle, stopped under the chestnut trees, its engines throbbing.
Like a flash it came into the detective's mind that the same automobile had
passed them once before some streets back. Ah, here was the intended way of
escape! On the front seat were two men, strong-looking fellows,
accomplices, no doubt. He must act at once while the wide street was still
between them.

"I ask because--" began M. Paul with his indifferent drawl, then swiftly
drawing his whistle, he sounded a danger call that cut the air in sinister
alarm. The stranger sprang away, but Coquenil was on him in a bound,
clutching him by the throat and pressing him back with intertwining legs
for a sudden fall. The bearded man saved himself by a quick turn, and with
a great heave of his shoulders broke the detective's grip, then suddenly
_he_ attacked, smiting for the neck, not with clenched fist but with the
open hand held sideways in the treacherous cleaving blow that the Japanese
use when they strike for the carotid. Coquenil ducked forward, saving
himself, but he felt the descending hand hard as stone on his shoulders.

"He struck with his _right_," thought M. Paul.

At the same moment he felt his adversary's hand close on his throat and
rejoiced, for he knew the deadly Jitsu reply to this. Hardening his neck
muscles until they covered the delicate parts beneath like bands of steel,
the detective seized his enemy's extended arm in his two hands, one at the
wrist, one at the elbow, and as his trained fingers sought the painful
pressure points, his two free arms started a resistless torsion movement on
the captured arm. There is no escape from this movement, no enduring its
excruciating pain; to a man taken at such a disadvantage one of two things
may happ