her voice held the desperation of womankind.

Deliberately Pell said: "All right! Then take what's coming to you and you
go to hell together, damn you both!"

He raised the gun and aimed a deadly aim.

Gilbert, in that mad moment, threw Lucia aside, to save her. He could not
let her die with him, much as he hated to leave her with this fiend
incarnate. "You'd better shoot straight," he cried to Pell. "Because, by
God, if you miss...." With one wild lunge, he knocked the lamp from the
table between them, and there was instant and terrible darkness.

Confused, Pell did not know what to do. His tongue was cleaving to the roof
of his mouth, his hand seemed to freeze on the trigger.

"What the devil!" he called out. And then a figure appeared miraculously in
the alcove, where one candle still burned, shedding a ghostly beam of light
from a shelf. "Good God!"

A shot rang out. But it was not Pell's revolver from which it sped. Morgan
Pell crumpled at the feet of Gilbert, and the bandit rushed in, the smoke
still coming from his gun.

"Santa Maria del Rio de Guadaloupe!" he cried. "'Ow many time I got for to
kill you to-day, any'ow? Now, damn to 'ell, mebbe you stay dead a while,
eh?" He looked down at the shriveled form. And as of old he called to his
henchman, "Pedro!"

And Pedro was there. "_Si!_" he said.

"Did I not tell you for kill zis man?" said Lopez, pointing in disgust to
Morgan Pell.

Swiftly in Spanish, and frightened almost out of his wits, poor Pedro
muttered something wholly unintelligible.

"Ees bum shooting! If she 'appen some more, zen I 'ave for get new Pedro.
Should be too bad. Especially for you. You onnerstand?"

Terrified at the thought, poor Pedro simply shivered. "_Si_," he whispered.

Lopez indicated Pell's body, and took out a cigarette nonchalantly. "Take
'im away. Ees no use for nobody no more." Pedro started to lift the heavy
form. "Save ze clothes and ze boots," he reminded his faithful man.

"_Si_," the latter said, meekly.

Venustiano appeared from the outer darkness, as if by magic, and rushed to
Pedro's aid. They lifted the stricken Pell, and carried him away.

The distasteful business finished, Lopez turned to Gilbert.

"Now, zen, you all right some more, eh?" he asked.

Gilbert could not understand. "I guess so," he said, "I--I thought you were
captured!"

"Me?" said Lopez in surprise, "It is not me, ees my double!"

"Your double?" Gilbert, amazed, answered.

"Ees