"It is a precaution that I frequently take, Sir Thomas, and one very much justified in the present instance. To tell the truth, I had little or no suspicion that I was walking into a trap—that much to you! But a life of shocks"—here he laughed pleasantly, but the little steel disk pointed at my heart never wavered a hair's breadth—"has taught me always to have something in reserve. I see that I shall not have the pleasure of settling accounts with Mr. Gideon Morse and his daughter to-night. Well, that can wait. Meanwhile, I propose within a few seconds to remove another obstacle from my path—do you think the mandarin, Pu-Yi, will be waiting for you at the golden gates, Sir Thomas Kirby?"
So this was the end! I braced myself to meet it.
"How long?" I said.
"I will count a hundred slowly," he answered.
He began, and I stared dumbly at the pistol. I could not think—I could not commend my soul to my Maker even. The function of thought was entirely arrested.
"Thirty ... thirty-one ... thirty-two!"
And then I suddenly burst out laughing.
My laughter, I know, was perfectly natural, full of genuine merriment. Something had happened which seemed to me irresistibly comic. He stopped and stared at me, his face changing ever so little.
"May I ask," he said, "what tickled your sense of humor?"
What had tickled my sense of humor was this. Stealing round from behind him, right under his very nose, so to speak, but quite unseen, was an arm which with infinite care and slowness was removing the heavy cut-glass decanter from the table. It vanished. It reappeared in the air behind him in a flashing diamond and amber circle.