I watched the gun barrel. The man's calm words seemed to horrify the woman at my side. But there was not a trace of pity in her voice as she spoke again. "Wait!" she cried. "Why?" asked the man with the gun. "He has everything--the code, the plans, everything." "Get them!" commanded the man. "But he's armed," she explained. A sneer crossed the other's impassive face. "What if he is? Take his gun; take everything!" The woman stepped close to where I stood. Again I came within the radius of her perfumes. I could even feel her breath on my face. Her movements were more than ever panther-like as she went through my pockets, one by one. Yet her flashing and dextrous hands found no revolver, for the simple reason there was none to find. This puzzled and worried her. "Hurry up!" commanded the man covering me. She stepped back and to one side, with the packet in her hand. "Now close the windows!" ordered the man. My heart went down in my boots as I heard the thud of that second closed window. There was going to be no waste of time. I thought of catching the woman and holding her shield-like before me. I thought of the telephone; the light-switch; the window. But they all seemed hopeless. The woman turned away, holding her hands over her ears. The incongruous thought flashed through me that two hours before I had called the city flat and stale; and here, within a rifle shot of my own door, I was standing face to face with death itself! "Look here," I cried, much as I hated to, "what do you get out of this?" "_You!_" said the man. "And what good will that do?" "It'll probably shut your mouth, for one thing!" "But there are other mouths," I cried. "And I'm afraid they'll have a great deal to say." "I'm ready for them!" was his answer. I could see his arm raise a little, and straighten out as it raised. The gun barrel was nothing but a black "O" at the end of my line of vision. I felt my heart stop, for I surmised what the movement meant. Then I laughed outright, aloud, and altogether foolishly and hysterically. The strain had been too much for me, and the snap of the release had come too suddenly, too unexpectedly. I could see the man with the gun blink perplexedly, for a second or two, and then I could see the tightening of his thin-lipped mouth. But that was not all I had seen. For through the half-closed door I had caught sight of the slowly raised iron rod, the very rod I had wrenched from the outer hall window. I had seen its descent at the moment I realized the finality in those quickly tightening lips. It struck the arm on its downward sweep. But it was not in time to stop the discharge of the revolver. The report thundered through the room as the bullet ripped and splintered into the pine of the floor. At the same moment the discharged firearm went spinning across the room, and as the man who held it went down with the blow, young Palmer himself swung toward me through the drifting smoke.