"What d'you think? I was out like a knife and let drive with my hand-gun. I killed the first one as dead as mutton, and missed the second, who shot like a stag into the undergrowth. Gad! It was great. I put two more where I thought he was, but as I still heard him crashing on I must have missed him. Then I nipped round the tree to find the gun. The only thing there was a great hole full of leaves. I ploughed across it, thinking it must be the other side, when, without a word of warning, I fell through the top—bang through the top, my boy, of the neatest hiding-place you've ever thought of. The whole of the centre of those leaves was a fake. There were about two inches of them supported on light hurdle-work. I was in the robber's cave with a vengeance."
"Was the gun there?" I cried, excitedly.
"It was. Also the Hun. The gun of small variety; the Hun of large—very large. I don't know which of us was the more surprised—him or me; we just stood gazing at one another.
"'Halloa, Englishman,' he said; 'come to leave a card?'
"'Quite right, Boche,' I answered. 'A p.p.c. one.'
"I was rather pleased with that touch at the time, old son. I was just going to elaborate it, and point out that he—as the dear departing—should really do it, when he was at me.
"Bill, my boy, you should have seen that fight. Like a fool, I never saw his revolver lying on the table, and I'd shoved my own back in my holster. He got it in his right hand, and I got his right wrist in my left. We'd each got the other by the throat, and one of us was for the count. We each knew that. At one time I thought he'd got me—we were crashing backwards and forwards, and I caught my head against a wooden pole which nearly stunned me. And, mark you, all the time I was expecting his pal to come back and inquire after his health. Then suddenly I felt him weaken, and I squeezed his throat the harder. It came quite quickly at the end. His pistol-hand collapsed, and I suppose muscular contraction pulled the trigger, for the bullet went through his head, though I think he was dead already." Dick O'Rourke paused, and looked thoughtfully into the fire.
"But why in the name of Heaven," I cried, irritably, "have you kept this dark all the while? Why didn't you tell us at the time?"
For a while he did not answer, and then he produced his pocket-book. From it he took a photograph, which he handed to me.
"Out of that German's pocket I took that photograph."