One of their own bombs could hardly have created greater surprise had it been fired in the midst of them. Every eye was fixed alternately on me and upon the newly arrived agent. “If you are indeed Gustave Berger,” said Petrokine, “who is this?” “That I am Gustave Berger these credentials will show,” said the stranger, as he threw a packet upon the table. “Who that man may be I know not; but if he has intruded himself upon the lodge under false pretences, it is clear that he must never carry out of the room what he has learned. Speak, sir,” he added, addressing me: “who and what are you?” I felt that my time had come. My revolver was in my hip-pocket; but what was that against so many desperate men? I grasped the butt of it, however, as a drowning man clings to a straw, and I tried to preserve my coolness as I glanced round at the cold, vindictive faces turned toward me. “Gentlemen,” I said, “the _rôle_ I have played to-night has been a purely involuntary one on my part. I am no police spy, as you seem to suspect; nor, on the other hand, have I the honor to be a member of your association. I am an inoffensive corn-dealer, who by an extraordinary mistake has been forced into this unpleasant and awkward position.” I paused for a moment. Was it my fancy that there was a peculiar noise in the street--a noise as of many feet treading softly? No, it had died away; it was but the throbbing of my own heart. “I need hardly say,” I continued, “that anything I may have heard to-night will be safe in my keeping. I pledge my solemn honor as a gentleman that not one word of it shall transpire through me.” The senses of men in great physical danger become strangely acute, or their imagination plays them curious tricks. My back was toward the door as I sat, but I could have sworn that I heard heavy breathing behind it. Was it the three minions whom I had seen before in the performance of their hateful functions, and who, like vultures, had sniffed another victim? I looked round the table. Still the same hard, cruel faces. Not one glance of sympathy. I cocked the revolver in my pocket. There was a painful silence, which was broken by the harsh, grating voice of Petrokine. “Promises are easily made and easily broken,” he said. “There is but one way of securing eternal silence. It is our lives or yours. Let the highest among us speak.” “You are right, sir,” said the English agent; “there is but one course open. He must be dismissed.” I knew what that meant in their confounded jargon, and sprang to my feet. “By Heaven,” I shouted, putting my back against the door, “you shan’t butcher a free Englishman like a sheep! The first among you who stirs, drops!”