you dare
not."

He was about to call out, but my left hand closed on his throat, and a
gurgling gasp was all that issued from him.

I laid down the revolver and turned the ear of the strangling man close
to my mouth. I had little time to think; but thought flies fast when
such deadly peril menaces the thinker as that which I must face if I
failed to make terms with the man who was in my power. I knew that
notwithstanding his intensely disagreeable nature, if he gave his
promise either by spoken word or equivalent sign, I could depend upon
him. There were no liars in Brande's Society. But the word I could not
trust him to say. I must have his sign. I whispered:

"You know I do not wish to kill you. I shall never have another happy
day if you force me to it. I have no choice. You must yield or die. If
you will yield and stand by me rather than against me in what shall
follow, choose life by taking your right hand from my wrist and touching
my left shoulder. I will not hurt you meanwhile. If you choose death,
touch me with your left."

The sweat stood on my forehead in big beads as I waited for his choice.
It was soon made. He unlocked his left hand and placed it firmly on my
right shoulder.

He had chosen death.

So the man was only a physical coward--or perhaps he had only made a
choice of alternatives.

I said slowly and in great agony, "May God have mercy on your soul--and
mine!" on which the muscles in my left arm stiffened. The big biceps--an
heirloom of my athletic days--thickened up, and I turned my eyes away
from the dying face, half hidden by the darkness. His struggles were
very terrible, but with my weight upon his lower limbs, and my grasp
upon his windpipe, that death-throe was as silent as it was horrible.
The end came slowly. I could not bear the horror of it longer. I must
finish it and be done with it. I put my right arm under the man's
shoulders and raised the upper part of his body from the berth. Then a
desperate wrench with my left arm, and there was a dull crack like the
snapping of a dry stick. It was over. Rockingham's neck was broken.

I wiped away the bloody froth that oozed from the gaping mouth, and
tried to compose decently the contorted figure. I covered the face.
Then I started on my last mission, for now I knew the door. I had
bought the knowledge dearly, and I meant to use it for my own purpose,
careless of what violence might be necessary to accomplish my end.

When I entered