"Fortunately," said Bill, "I didn't break the decanter. The stopper didn't even come out! You look pretty sick, Sir Thomas"--and indeed a horrible feeling of nausea had come over me, and my hands were shaking--"let's each have a drink and then I'll tell you what I think." We sat down on each side of the table, and I listened to him as if the whole thing were some curious dream. For the second time I had been snatched from the very brink of death, and though I suppose I ought to have been getting used to it my only sensation was one of limpness and collapse. "Can you do it?" my little friend said, pointing to the pistol between us. I took it up, weighed it in my hand, half-pointed it at the stiff, red-faced figure in the chair, and laid it down again. "No, I'm damned if I can!" I answered. And then--I must have been more than half-dazed--I actually said: "You have a go, Bill." He looked at me in horror. "Murder him in cold blood! I should never know a moment's peace, Sir Thomas!" "Well, you nearly did it in hot, and you've just been tempting me--" "Let us bring him to, if we can," he said, tactfully changing the conversation and advancing upon our friend with the siphon of soda-water. There was a grotesque horror about the whole of our adventure that night. I laughed weakly as the soda hissed and the stream of aerated water splashed over Midwinter's face. Before the final gurgle he awoke. His eyes opened without speculation. Then his jaw dropped. For a moment his face was as vacant as a doll's, and then it flared up into a snarl of realization and hatred, only, in another instant, to settle down into a dead calm. "My turn now," I said. He knew the game was up. I will do him the justice to say he did not flinch. "Very well, count a hundred," was his answer, and his eye fell to the two pistols on the table--his own and mine. I shook my head. "I can't do it--I wish I could!" "You'll find it quite easy--I speak from experience," he replied, with a desperate, evil grin. "No. I have talked the situation over with my friend. You are going to die, that is very certain, but not by my hand now, and not, Mr. Midwinter, by the hand of the English law." He was very quick. Even then he had an inkling of my meaning, for a perceptible shadow fell over his face and his eyes narrowed to slits. "You mean?" "We are going to telephone to the City in the Clouds. People will come from there and take you away--that will be easily managed. You will have some form of trial, and then--execution." I never saw a change from red to white so sudden. That big face suddenly became a hideous, sickly white, toneless and opaque like the belly of a sole. "You won't deliver me to the Chinese?" he gasped. "You can't know them as I do. They'd take a week killing me! They have horrible secrets--" His voice died away in a whimper, and if ever I saw a man in deadly terror, it was that man then.