"You lie!" he cried. "What you say is impossible!"
She said, always with the coolness of a person no longer menaced by peril, and with an imperious contempt:
"Turn round!... You'll see their guns leveled at your breast. At a word from me they fire! Turn round then!"
He shrunk back. He did not wish to obey. But Dorothy's eyes, blazing, irresistible, stronger than he, compelled him; and yielding to their compulsion, he turned round.
It was the last quarter of the last minute.
With all the force of her being, with a strength of conviction which did not permit the ruffian to think, she commanded:
"Hands up, you blackguard! Or they'll shoot you like a dog! Hands up! Shoot there! Show no mercy! Shoot! Hands up!"
D'Estreicher saw the rifle. He raised his hands.
Dorothy sprang on him and in a second tore a revolver from his jacket pocket, and aiming at his head, without her heart quickening a beat and with a perfectly steady hand, she said slowly, her eyes gleaming maliciously:
"Idiot! I told you plainly you were lost."