"Good again! Do you mind going down and ringing up New Scotland Yard, Lady Vera? On your way you might please see if all three doors are shut in the room opposite; then, perhaps—no! I should leave this one open after all, I think." Three seconds had sufficed to close the triple doors, one more quickly than another, behind them.
"I should, if I were you," said Scarth. "And I should think a good many times before carrying out your other instructions—if I were the lady at the bottom of one of the few mysteries that still puzzle Scotland Yard."
There was a pause, in which Dollar heard only a sharp intake of breath on the threshold just behind him; but that was enough.
"I believe I shall have to shoot you, after all," said he, and the hammer of the mother-of-pearl revolver clicked to full cock.
"Won't that rather spoil your game?" said Scarth, blandly.
"Mine is not the game that matters at the moment—yours is. As, however, you have been fool enough to have a key cut expressly to fit my front-door lock, and have been discovered in my room at midnight——"
"In the most distinguished company! Go on, Dollar. Nothing extenuate—bang the field-piece—twang the lyre!"
His teeth were showing as they had shown on the platform at Winterwald nine months before; the tag from his famous impersonation had slipped out with all the snap and gusto which had captivated an unruly audience then; and it was not without a slight mesmeric effect on the man who had him at his mercy. If Scarth in turn had not held Vera Moyle at his mercy, and if John Dollar had not known him to be utterly devoid of that quality, he could have admired the cool daredevil, swaggering at bay.
"Remember the concert at Winterwald, doctor," he went on, "and our talk afterward, and the last talk we ever had there? He thought I had two tries to kill a fellow, Lady Vera—two bites at such a green young nut! Better to finish 'em off at one fell blow, isn't it? Not such fun for the widow, or the poor innocent devil who nearly swings for the job, but great work for the militant Millies and their lady leader! Splendid for you all until the truth comes out—as it will the minute a policeman shows his nose!"
It was Lady Vera who had obtained him this hearing. She had stepped up to Dollar, had taken his arm, had even put her other hand in front of her own revolver.