"I was willing to pay you real money," said Loge, "for the sake of peace.But you're a damned fool if you think you can throw me down and then walk straight out of here to headquarters." Then he added, showing his yellow teeth: "You WOULD bring pistols into the conversation, you know.That was YOUR idea.And now you're in a devil of a fix."The man certainly had an iron nerve; he spoke as calmly as if Cleggett's weapon were not in existence; there was nothing but the pressure of a finger wanting to send both him and Cleggett to eternity.Yet he jested; he laid his strong and devilish will across Cleggett's mentality; it was a duel in which the two minds met and tried each other like swords; the first break in intention, and one or the other was a dead man.Cleggett felt the weight of that powerful and evil soul upon his own almost as if it were a physical thing.
"You are not altogether safe yourself," said Cleggett grimly, with hiseyes fixed on Pierre's and his pistol touching Loge's waistband."If Pierre so much as winks an eye--if you move a hair's breadth--I'll put a stream of bullets through YOU.Understand?"How long this singular psychological combat might have lasted before a nerve quivered somewhere and brought the denouement of a double death, there is no telling.For accident (or fate) intervened to pluck these antagonists back into life and rob the gloating Pierre of the happiness of seeing two men perish without danger to himself.Something of uncertain shape, but of a blue color, loomed vaguely behind Pierre's head; loomed and suddenly descended to the accompaniment of a piercing shriek.Pierre's pistol went off, but he had evidently been stricken between the shoulders; the ball went wild, and the pistol itself dropped from his hand, another cartridge exploding as it hit the floor.The next instant Pierre tumbled headlong through the hole, landing upon Loge, who, not braced for the shock, went down himself.
As the two men struggled to rise a strange figure precipitated itself from the room above, feet first, and hit both of them, knocking them down again.It was a tall man, thin and lank, clad only in a suit of silk pajamas of the color known as baby blue; he was barefoot, and Cleggett, with that lucid grasp of detail which comes to men oftener in nightmares than in real life, noticed that he had a bunion at the large joint of his right great toe.
If the man was startling, he was no less startled himself.Leaping from the struggling forms of Pierre and Loge, who defeated each other's frantic efforts to rise, he was across the barroom in three wild bounds, shrieking shrilly as he leaped; he bolted through the west door and cleared the verandah at a jump.
Loge, gaining his feet, was after the man in blue in an instant, evidently thinking no more of Cleggett than if the latter had been in Madagascar.And as for Cleggett, although he might have shot down Loge a dozen times over, he was so astonished at what he saw that the thought never entered his head.He had, in fact, forgotten that he held apistol in his hand.Pierre scrambled to his feet and followed Loge.
Cleggett, running after them, saw the man in the blue pajamas sprinting along the sandy margin of the bay.But Loge, his hat gone, his coat tails level in the wind behind him, and his large patent leather shoes flashing in the morning sunlight, was overhauling him with long and powerful strides.Cleggett saw the quarry throw a startled glance over his shoulder; he was no match for the terrible Loge in speed, and he must have realized it with despair, for he turned sharply at right angles and rushed into the sea.Loge unhesitatingly plunged after him, and had caught him by the shoulder and whirled him about before he had reached a swimming depth.They clinched, in water mid-thigh deep, and then Cleggett saw Loge plant his fist, with scientific precision and awful force, upon the point of the other's jaw.The man in the blue pajamas collapsed; he would have dropped into the water, but Loge caught him as he fell, threw his body across a shoulder with little apparent effort, and trotted back into the house with him.
Cleggett had left his sword cane in the barroom, but he judged it would be just as well to allow it to remain there for the present.He turned and walked meditatively across the sands towards the Jasper B.
