"Well, there is no use going ahead with this while he is out there.
Even if we found the drawer, we'd both be dead an instant later."
"You mean he'd kill us?"
"He would shoot us instantly. Imagine what a sensation that would make, Lester. Parks hears two pistol shots, rushes in and finds us lying here dead. Grady would have a convulsion—and we should both be famous for a few days."
"I'll seek fame in some other way," I said drily. "What are you going to do about it?"
"We've got to try to capture him; and if we do—well, we shall have the fame all right! But it's a good deal like trying to pick up a scorpion—we're pretty sure to get hurt. If that fellow out there is who I think he is, he's about the most dangerous man on earth."
He went on tapping the surface of the cabinet. As for me, I would have given anything for another look at those gleaming eyes. They seemed to be burning into me; hot flashes were shooting up and down my back.
"Why can't I go out as though I were going after something," I suggested. "Then Parks and I could charge around the corner and get him."
"You wouldn't get him, he'd get you. You wouldn't have a chance on earth. If there is a window upstairs over that one, you might drop something out on him, or borrow Parks's pistol and shoot him—"
"That would be pretty cowardly, wouldn't it?" I suggested, mildly.
"My dear Lester," Godfrey protested, "when you attack a poisonous snake, you don't do it with bare hands, do you?"