"I might as well ask where you get your gall, Harvey," returned de Spain, watching Logan hunch Sandusky toward the left that both might crowd him closer. "I was born with my beauty-mark--just as you were born with your damned bad manners," he added composedly, for in hugging up to him his enemies were playing his game. "You can't help it, neither can I," he went on. "Somebody is bound to pay for putting that mark on me. Somebody is bound to pay for your manners. Why talk about either? Sassoon, set out for your friends--or I will. Spread, gentlemen, spread." He had reached the position on which he believed his life depended, and stood so close to the end of the bar that with a single step, as he uttered the last words, he turned it. Sandusky pushed close next him. De Spain continued to speak without hesitation or break, but the words seemed to have no place in his mind. He was thinking only, and saw only within his field of vision, a cut-glass button that fastened the bottom of Sandusky's greased waistcoat. "You've waited one day too long to collect for your strawberry, de Spain," cried Logan shrilly. "You've turned one trick too many on the Sinks, young fellow. If the man that put your mark on you ain't in this room, you'll never get him." "Which means, I take it, you're going to try to get me," smiled de Spain. "No," bellowed Morgan, "it means we have got you." "You are fooling yourself, Harvey." De Spain addressed the warning to Logan. "And you, too, Sandusky," he added. "We'll take care of that," grinned Logan. Sandusky kept silence. "You are jumping into another man's fight," protested de Spain steadily. "Sassoon's fight is our fight," interrupted Morgan. "I advise you," said de Spain once more, looking with the words at Sandusky and his crony, "to keep out of it." "Sandusky," yelled Logan to his partner, "he advises me and you to keep out of this fight," he shrilly laughed. "Sure," assented Sandusky, but with no variation in tone and his eyes on de Spain. Logan, with an oath, leaned over the bar toward Sassoon, and pointed contemptuously toward the end of the bar. "Shike!" he cried, "step through the rail and take that man's gun." De Spain, looking from one to the other of the four faces confronting him, laughed for the first time. But he was looking without seeing what he seemed to look at. In reality, he saw only a cut-glass button. He was face to face with taking a man's life or surrendering his own, and he knew the life must be taken in such a way as instantly to disable its possessor. These men had chosen their time and place. There was nothing for it but to meet them. Sassoon was stepping toward him, though very doubtfully. De Spain laughed again, dryly this time. "Go slow, Sassoon," he said. "That gun is loaded." "If you want terms, hand over your gun to Sassoon," cried Logan. "Not till it's empty," returned de Spain. "Do you want to try taking it?" he demanded of Logan, his cheeks burning a little darker.