"Very well, count a hundred," was his answer, and his eye fell to the two pistols on the table—his own and mine.
I shook my head. "I can't do it—I wish I could!"
"You'll find it quite easy—I speak from experience," he replied, with a desperate, evil grin.
"No. I have talked the situation over with my friend. You are going to die, that is very certain, but not by my hand now, and not, Mr. Midwinter, by the hand of the English law."
He was very quick. Even then he had an inkling of my meaning, for a perceptible shadow fell over his face and his eyes narrowed to slits.
"You mean?"
"We are going to telephone to the City in the Clouds. People will come from there and take you away—that will be easily managed. You will have some form of trial, and then—execution."
I never saw a change from red to white so sudden. That big face suddenly became a hideous, sickly white, toneless and opaque like the belly of a sole.
"You won't deliver me to the Chinese?" he gasped. "You can't know them as I do. They'd take a week killing me! They have horrible secrets—"
His voice died away in a whimper, and if ever I saw a man in deadly terror, it was that man then.