t warn me?" croaked Perkins.

"Why should I warn you? If you can't take care of your own prisoner she
earns her liberty, as far as I am concerned. I never did like your
style, Perkins, especially your methods of handling--or rather
mishandling--women. You could have made her give up the stuff she
recovered from that ass Brookings inside of an hour, and wouldn't have
had to kill her afterward, either."

"How?" sneered the other. "If you are so good at that kind of thing, why
didn't you try it on Seaton and Crane?"

"There are seven different methods to use on a woman like Miss Spencer,
each of which will produce the desired result. The reason I did not try
them on either Seaton or Crane is that they would have failed. Your
method of indirect action is probably the only one that will succeed.
That is why I adopted it."

"Well, what are you going to do about it?" shrieked Perkins. "Are you
going to sit there and lecture all day?"

"I am going to do nothing whatever," answered the scientist coldly. "If
you had any brains you would see that you are in no danger. Miss Spencer
will undoubtedly kill you if you attack her--not otherwise. That is an
Anglo-Saxon weakness."

"Did you see me take the pistols?" queried Dorothy.

"Certainly. I'm not blind. You have one of them in your right coat
pocket now."

"Then why didn't you, or don't you, try to take it away from me?" she
asked in wonder.

"If I had objected to your having them, you would never have got them.
If I didn't want you to have a gun now, I would take it away from you.
You know that, don't you?" and his black eyes stared into her violet
ones with such calm certainty of his ability that she felt her heart
sink.

"Yes," she admitted finally, "I believe you could--that is, unless I
were angry enough to shoot you."

"That wouldn't help you. I can shoot faster and straighter than you can,
and would shoot it out of your hand. However, I have no objection to
your having the gun, since it is no part of my plan to offer you any
further indignity of any kind. Even if you had the necessary coldness of
nerve or cruelty of disposition--of which I have one, Perkins the other,
and you neither--you wouldn't shoot me now, because you can't get back
to the earth without me. After we get back I will take the guns away
from both of you if I think it desirable. In the meantime, play with
them all you please."

"Has Perkins any more knives or guns or things in his room?" dem