"How should they know we are not friends? We have been friends up to this. Your secret designs upon my life have not been, I assume, communicated to anyone." "Yes, but they would come then and find me wounded, perhaps dead. They would find you here. They would know that you have had some unaccountable connection with the assault upon my son, were found in the vault with the dead body of that man Crawford, and are now found here with another injured man, and with a revolver in your hand. All this would be strong enough, I am sure, to convince people that I had been the victim of foul play." "Up to a certain point, sir, I quite agree with you; and if the facts were to be exactly as you have described them, I have no doubt whatever that an intelligent jury would string me up. But there is a slight difference between what you fancy would occur and what seems to me likely to happen. I will describe to you briefly what, to my mind, would occur. I would hold this revolver thus and pull twice, sending one bullet through the head to insure instant insensibility, sending a second through the cavity of the chest to secure ultimate death. Then I would take this revolver and put it in your hand." Lavirotte held the weapon in his right hand, and pointed at James O'Donnell's head. With his left hand he touched the barrel as he spoke. "For God's sake put that thing down!" Lavirotte laughed. "You have not yet been so long under the magic ordeal of its glance as I was a little while ago. Within a minute some persons would be in this room. They would find me in a state of terrible excitement. They would find me calling for help at the door and at the window. They would find me a man absolutely distracted. They would find you either sitting in that chair dead or dying, or lying on the floor. They would find this revolver--your own revolver--in your hand, or close by, where you let it fall after committing suicide." "Suicide!" "They would hear from me how you received news that I could not help you, although I had hoped to be able to do so; that you came over here to learn from me personally if there were not some chance of my being able to aid you, and that upon my telling you there was not, you, to my grief and horror, put an end to yourself. You see, sir," said Lavirotte, lowering the revolver and throwing himself back in his chair, "your story could not be heard. Mine would be the only one forthcoming, and on each of the six sides of the cube of my story is the hall-mark of truth."