“Open the breech of your gun,” he said, “and let the barrels drop.... Now hold it in one hand, with your arm stretched out.... That’s right. Good dog!... Now lay the gun down and turn round with your back to me.... Stop like that without moving.... Remember that I am covering you, and I could hardly miss at this distance.”
Colin picked up the gun and took the two cartridges out and put them in his pocket. Not till they clinked against the revolver cartridges that lay there did he remember that all the time his pistol had been unloaded. He stifled a laugh.
“Take off your cartridge-bag, Raymond,” he said, “and put it on the ground.”
“There are no more in it,” said Raymond, speaking for the first time.
“You ill-conditioned swine, do as I tell you,” said Colin. “I shan’t give you an order twice again.... Well, what you said seems to be true, but that’s not the point. The point is that you’re to do as I tell you. Now have you got any more cartridges in your pockets?”
“No.”
Colin thought he had better make sure of this for himself, and passed his hand over Raymond’s coat-pockets.
“Now you stand just where you are,” he said, “because we’ve got to talk. But first I’ll put some cartridges in my own revolver. It has been perfectly empty all this time. Isn’t that damned funny, Raymond, dear? There were you expecting every moment would be your last, and obeying me like the sweet, obedient boy you are. Laugh, can’t you? It’s one of the funniest things that ever happened.”
Colin lit a cigarette with shouts of laughter.
“Well, to business,” he said. “Turn round and let’s see your face. Do you know a parlour-trick called thought-reading? I’m going to tell you what you’ve been thinking about. You expected me to come round that corner on my bike; and from behind the wall you were going to fire point-blank at me. Not at all a bad idea. There was the homicidal lunatic, you thought, loose in the woods, and my death would have been put down to him.... But you would have been hanged for it all the same, because he was taken nearly an hour ago without firing a shot. So I’ve saved you from the gallows. Good idea of yours, but it had a flaw in it.”