Stark grew silent for a space as he thoughtfully surveyed the group before him. "Hum!" he mused at length: "it doesn't matter much how it happened. We've returned to the status quo, as it were. I didn't do a very good job of it the last time, but that's something easily corrected."
The smile faded from the man's face, and he stood with feet apart, fingering the lock of his rifle, measuring the officer with merciless glance. "It would have been better for you if you'd let well enough alone," he said. "You wouldn't have it to go through with again."
His head turned slightly as he spoke, and he nodded politely to Alison. "Will you please stand aside, Miss Rayne?" he invited.
"Do as he says," counseled Dexter as the girl hesitated. He looked at her for a moment with a gentle glance, and drew a faint, quivering breath. "Go over by the bunk, please."
"Now!" said Stark crisply, as the girl moved away on stumbling feet.
"You're lucky this time," he pursued. "I'm in a hurry, and I'll make it quick." His lips pressed together in a hard, narrow line, and he cocked the hammer of his rifle, and started slowly and deliberately to raise the muzzle.
Dexter's heels came instinctively together, and he drew up his spare body, straight and unmoving, like a soldier at salute. He faced his enemy quietly, his fine-drawn features set in unchanging, stoic lines.
Nobody in the room spoke or stirred, and the hush of death fell about them. Stark leveled his rifle and lined his sights upon the erect figure standing under the light of the guttering lantern. Grimly he began to count: "One—two—"
He got no farther. A streak of red flame lashed past the corporal's shoulder, and the stuffy silence of the room was jarred by a sharp, cracking explosion. The barrel of Stark's rifle wavered in his grasp, and a crimson bullet welt showed suddenly across the tanned flesh above his cheek bone.
Shocked, wondering, Dexter whirled to stare behind him, and he saw Alison Rayne crouching by the bunk, with a smoking revolver clenched in her fist.