“The guard will be here presently,” said I, fervently hoping I spoke the truth, “and he will tell you of the ring. I am quite sure Senhor Valcour has it.”
“Ah, I am betrayed! You wish to take all—you and this Valcour! But see, my Americano—I will kill you. I will kill you now, and then you have nothing for your treachery!”
Slowly he edged his way around the table, menacing me with his strange weapon, and with my eyes fixed upon his I moved in the opposite direction, retaining the table as my shield.
First in one direction and then in the other he moved, swiftly at times, then with deliberate caution, striving ever to take me unawares and reach me with his improvised dagger.
This situation could not stand the tension for long; I realized that sooner or later the game must have an abrupt ending.
So, as I dodged my persistent enemy, I set my wits working to devise a means of escape. The window seemed my only hope, and I had lost all fear of the sentry in the more terrible danger that confronted me.
Suddenly I exerted my strength and thrust the table against the Mexican so forcibly that he staggered backward. Then I caught up a chair and after a swing around my head hurled it toward him like a catapult. It crushed him to the floor, and e’er he could rise again I had thrown up the sash of the window and leaped out.
Fortune often favors the desperate. I alighted full upon the form of the unsuspecting sentry, bearing him to the ground by my weight, where we both rolled in the grass.
Quickly I regained my feet and darted away into the flower-garden, seeking to reach the hedges before my guard could recover himself.
Over my shoulder I saw him kneeling and deliberately pointing at me his carbine. Before he could fire the flying form of the Mexican descended upon him from the window. There was a flash and a report, but the ball went wide its mark, and instantly the two men were struggling in a death-grapple upon the lawn.