From Newbold's belt depended a holster and a heavy revolver. As Armstrong made to attack him he flashed it out with astonishing quickness and presented it. The newcomer was unarmed, his Winchester leaned against the wall by his fur coat and he had no pistol. "If you move a step forward or backward," said Newbold with deadly calm, "I will kill you without mercy." "So you'd take advantage of a weaponless man, would you?" sneered Armstrong. "Oh, for God's sake," cried the woman, "don't kill him." "You both misjudge me," was the answer. "I shall take no advantage of this man. I would disdain to do so if it were necessary, but before the last resort I must have speech with him, and this is the only way in which I can keep him quiet for a moment, if as I suspect, his hate measures with mine." "You have the advantage," protested Armstrong. "Say your say and get it over with. I've waited all these years for a chance to kill you and my patience is exhausted." Still keeping the other covered, Newbold stepped over to the table, pulled out the drawer and drew from it the locket. Enid remembered she had hastily thrust it there when he had handed it to her and there it had lain unnoted and forgotten. It was quite evident to her what was toward now. Newbold had recognized the other man, explanations were inevitable. With his left hand Newbold sought the catch of the locket and pressed the spring. In two steps he faced Armstrong with the open locket thrust toward him. "Your picture?" he asked. "Mine." "Do you know the locket?" "I gave it to a woman named Louise Rosser five or six years ago." "My wife." "Yes, she was crazy in love with me but--" With diabolic malice Armstrong left the sentence uncompleted. The inference he meant should be drawn from his reticence was obvious. "I took it from her dead body," gritted out Newbold. "She was beside herself with love for me, an old affair, you know," said Armstrong more explicitly, thinking to use a spear with a double barb to pierce the woman's and the man's heart alike. That he defamed the dead was of no moment then. "She wanted to leave you," he ran on glibly, "she wanted me to take her back and--" "Untrue," burst forth from Enid Maitland's lips. "A slanderous, dastardly, cowardly untruth." But the men paid no attention to her in their excitement, perhaps they did not even hear her. Newbold thrust his pistol violently forward. "Would you murder me as you murdered the woman?" gibed Armstrong in bitter taunt. Then Enid Maitland found it in her heart to urge Newbold to kill him where he stood, but she had no time if she could have carried out her design, for Newbold flung the weapon from him and the next moment the two men leaped upon each other, straining, struggling, clawing, battling like savage beasts, each seeking to clasp his fingers around the throat of the other and then twist and crush until life was gone.