"You are merely trying to gain time, and you know it, Mr. Galbraith. My stake in this game is much more than a handful of charity silver; and I don't do you the injustice to believe that you hold your life so cheaply; you who have so much money and, at best, so few years to live." The president put the little heap of coins on the desk, but he did not abandon the struggle for delay. "What's your price, then?" he demanded, as one who may possibly consider a compromise. "One hundred thousand dollars--in cash." "But man! ye're clean daft! Do ye think I have----" "I am not here to argue," was the incisive interruption. "Take your pen and fill out a check payable to your own order for one hundred thousand dollars, and do it now. If that door opens before we have concluded, you are a dead man!" At this Andrew Galbraith saw that the end was nigh and gathered himself for a final effort at time-killing. It was absurd; he had no such balance to his personal credit; such a check would not be honored; it would be an overdraft, and the teller would very properly-- In the midst of his vehement protests the stranger sprang out of his chair, stepped back a pace and raised his weapon. "Mr. Galbraith, you are juggling with your life! Write that check while there is yet time!" A sound of subdued voices came from the anteroom, and the beleaguered old man stole a swift upward glance at the face of his persecutor. There was no mercy in the fierce blue eyes glaring down upon him; neither compassion nor compunction, but rather madness and fell murder. The summons came once again. "Do it quickly, I say, before we are interrupted. Do you hear?" Truly, the president both heard and understood; yet he hesitated one other second. "You will not? Then may God have mercy----" The hammer of the levelled pistol clicked. Andrew Galbraith shut his eyes and made a blind grasp for pen and check-book. His hands were shaking as with a palsy, but the fear of death steadied them suddenly when he came to write. "Indorse it!" was the next command. The voices had ceased beyond the partition, and the dead silence was relieved only by the labored strokes of the president's pen and the tap-tap of the typewriter in the adjacent anteroom. The check was written and indorsed, and under the menace of the revolver Andrew Galbraith was trying to give it to the robber. But the robber would not take it. "No, I don't want your paper: come with me to your paying teller and get me the money. Make what explanation you see fit; but remember--if he hesitates, you die."