Alert for any sign of retaliation, they watched him take an insignificant penknife from his pocket and begin to trim the pencil. Was there in his mind any mad impulse to force conclusions with that puny weapon? Dompierre worked his face into a fiercer expression and touched reassuringly the handle of his knife. Montmorency looked on for a moment, then, whistling softly to himself, turned his back on the table and strolled towards the window, avoiding Madame Nina's pursuant eye. Then, with overwhelming suddenness, it came, and in its form altogether unexpected. Carrados had been putting the last strokes to the pencil, whittling it down upon the table. There had been no hasty movement, no violent act to give them warning; only the little blade had pushed itself nearer and nearer to the electric light cord lying there ... and suddenly and instantly the room was plunged into absolute darkness. "To the door, Dom!" shouted Montmorency in a flash. "I am at the window. Don't let him pass and we are all right." "I am here," responded Dompierre from the door. "He will not attempt to pass," came the quiet voice of Carrados from across the room. "You are now all exactly where I want you. You are both covered. If either moves an inch, I fire--and remember that I shoot by sound, not sight." "But--but what does it mean?" stammered Montmorency, above the despairing wail of Madame Dompierre. "It means that we are now on equal terms--three blind men in a dark room. The numerical advantage that you possess is counterbalanced by the fact that you are out of your element--I am in mine." "Dom," whispered Montmorency across the dark space, "strike a match. I have none." "I would not, Dompierre, if I were you," advised Carrados, with a short laugh. "It might be dangerous." At once his voice seemed to leap into a passion. "Drop that matchbox," he cried. "You are standing on the brink of your grave, you fool! Drop it, I say; let me hear it fall." A breath of thought--almost too short to call a pause--then a little thud of surrender sounded from the carpet by the door. The two conspirators seemed to hold their breath. "That is right." The placid voice once more resumed its sway. "Why cannot things be agreeable? I hate to have to shout, but you seem far from grasping the situation yet. Remember that I do not take the slightest risk. Also please remember, Mr Montmorency, that the action even of a hair-trigger automatic scrapes slightly as it comes up. I remind you of that for your own good, because if you are so ill-advised as to think of trying to pot me in the dark, that noise gives me a fifth of a second start of you. Do you by any chance know Zinghi's in Mercer Street?" "The shooting gallery?" asked Mr Montmorency a little sulkily.