There was a gleam of triumph in Larry Hughes' face. "I'll make it twenty thousand," he said. "That ought to satisfy you." Labar still looked doubtful. He shifted the hand which he had been pressing to the hurt in his side, and Larry, if he noticed the motion, paid no attention. He felt that danger was no longer to be anticipated from the detective. "I'll think it over," said the latter. "No, no." Larry was smiling confidently. "Make up your mind now." Labar held his hand in front of him. The blood had soaked through and stained his fingers. "I'm--a--little--dizzy," he ejaculated faintly. "Got it worse than I thought." Larry lifted an inquiring eyebrow at Mrs. Gertstein. "I--I hurt him," she said, and her eyes rested on the blood-stained dagger which Labar had placed on the mantel. The crook nodded comprehendingly and advanced towards the detective. "Let's see what we can do," he said. For the first time during the interview he was off his guard. In that instant the detective acted. He had followed Moreland's advice and a pistol reposed in his coat pocket. As he pulled it, a little clumsily maybe, Larry levelled his own weapon. The reports followed hard upon each other and Mrs. Gertstein's scream rang through the house. Labar was no marksman even at that distance, and the other's aim had been hurried. The detective felt a bullet whistle over his shoulder and heard it crash into the wall. He had no doubt that his own shot had missed. The detective drove forward on the instant and saw the ugly muzzle of Larry's weapon within a yard of his face. He swerved and swung his own weapon like a club straight at the distorted face of his antagonist. Larry went down like a poleaxed ox. Above the hysterical screams of Mrs. Gertstein Labar could hear the sound of hurrying feet. They might be those of friends or enemies. He could not afford to risk it. He slipped through the open French windows and ran, as he had not run since he was a boy, for the shelter of a shrubbery. CHAPTER XV From the cover of a group of lilacs the detective inspector glanced swiftly back at the house a hundred yards away. A man was standing by the window scanning the shrubbery. Apparently obeying some summons from within he disappeared, only to return almost at once, accompanied by a couple of other men. Labar thought that he could recognise one of them, even at that distance, as a notorious race-gang tough who was known to be the leader of a group of violent and reckless men which the police had of late broken up. Billy Bungey had only escaped by the narrowest margin from a conviction for murder.