"I am not a detective. Nevertheless, I hope in the near future to see you behind the bars and to help put you there. It may interest you to know that my opinion of your intellect is no higher than my opinion of your character. You seem to me to have a vast conceit of your own cleverness, which is not justified by the facts. You are a very stupid fellow; a—a—what is the slang word? Boob, I believe."
But while Cleggett was finishing his remarks a subtle change stole over Loge's countenance. His attitude, which had been one of baffled rage, relaxed. As Cleggett paused the sneer came back upon Loge's lips.
"Boob," he said quietly, "boob is the word. Look above you."
A sharp metallic click overhead gave point to Loge's words. Looking up, Cleggett saw that a trap-door had opened in the ceiling, and through the aperture Pierre, who had left the room some moments before with the bartender, was pointing a revolver, which he had just cocked, at Cleggett's head. He sighted along the barrel with an eager, anticipatory smile upon his face; Pierre would, no doubt, have preferred to see a man boiled in oil rather than merely shot, but shooting was something, and Pierre evidently intended to get all the delight possible out of the situation.
Cleggett's own pistol was within an inch of Loge's stomach.
"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 his eyes 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.