"Back to New York."
Binhart laughed. It was a laugh without any mirth in it.
"Jim, you 're foolish. You could n't get me back to New York alive, any more than you could take Victoria Peak to New York!"
"All right, then, I 'll take you along the other way, if I ain't going to take you alive. I 've followed you a good many thousand miles, Connie, and a little loose talk ain't going to make me lie down at this stage of the game."
Binhart sat studying the other man for a moment or two.
"Then how about a little real talk, the kind of talk that money makes?"
"Nothing doing!" declared Blake, folding his arms.
Binhart flickered a glance at him as he thrust his own right hand down into the hand-bag on his knees.
"I want to show you what you could get out of this," he said, leaning forward a little as he looked up at Blake.
When his exploring right hand was lifted again above the top of the bag Blake firmly expected to see papers of some sort between its fingers. He was astonished to see something metallic, something which glittered bright in the light from the wall lamp. The record of this discovery had scarcely been carried back to his brain, when the silence of the room seemed to explode into a white sting, a puff of noise that felt like a whip lash curling about Blake's leg. It seemed to roll off in a shifting and drifting cloud of smoke.