r than myself, and at first he had the
advantage; but not for long, because, resorting to a ruse taught me long
ago by a man who was a professional wrestler at the music-halls, I
succeeded in turning the muzzle of the weapon into his face.

If I had liked, I could have pulled the trigger and blown half his head
away. Yet, although I had become the accomplice of a daring gang of
jewel-thieves, and though one of them had given me the weapon to use in
case of need, I had neither desire nor intention of becoming a murderer.

For fully six or seven minutes we were locked in deadly embrace.
Upton, time after time, tried to turn the weapon upon me, and so
compel me to give it up under threats of death. In this, however,
he was unsuccessful, though more than once he showered at me fierce
imprecations.

He had his thin, sinewy hands in my collar, and was pressing his bony
knuckles into my throat, until I was half throttled, when, of a sudden,
by dint of an effort of which I had never believed myself capable, I
gave his arm a twist which nearly dislocated his shoulder and forced him
to release his hold. I still had the revolver tightly clenched in my
right hand, for I had now succeeded in changing it from my left, and at
last slipped it back into my hip-pocket, leaving both hands free. Then,
in our desperate struggle, he tried to force me backwards over the
steering-wheel, and would have done so had I not been able to trip him
unexpectedly. In a second I had flung my whole weight upon him and sent
him clutching at the air over the splashboard, and so across the
"bonnet" to the ground.

In a moment I restarted the car, but not before he had risen and
remounted upon the step.

"You shan't get away!" he cried. "Even if you leave me here you'll be
arrested by the German police before night. They already have your
description."

"Enough!" I cried savagely, again whipping out my weapon. "Get down--or
I'll shoot!"

"Shoot, then!" he shouted defiantly.

"Take that instead!" I replied, and, with the butt-end of the weapon, I
struck him full between the eyes, causing him to fall back into the
road, where he lay like a log.

Without a second glance at him, I allowed the car to gather speed, and
in a few moments was running across a flat, level plain at quite fifty
miles an hour. Upton lay insensible, and the longer he remained so the
farther afield I should be able to get without information being sent
before me.

Mine was now