"Stay where you are, don't come here!" cried the armed Makkabesku, in an agony of terror, "or I'll shoot you through," and as the mask continued to advance, he hurriedly fired off the left barrel of the gun.
The smoke of the powder cleared away, Fatia Negra stood there unwounded, he was coming nearer and nearer!
Ah, those little shots could not hurt him, of course—but now he shall have the bullet with the steel point.
As the first shot was fired, Makkabesku's wife came running out of the kitchen and came face to face with the robber. He immediately seized her arm with his muscular hand and flung her back into the kitchen the door of which he locked upon her.
Mr. Makkabesku permitted all this to go on before his very eyes, but he had raised the gun and held it firmly pressed against his cheek, he wanted the robber to draw nearer still that he might make quite sure of him.
When there were only three yards between them he aimed right at the middle of the intruder, pressed the trigger of the gun and the right barrel also exploded.
Yet the report was followed by no death cry—and Fatia Negra still stood in front of him unscathed.
Paralyzed with terror Makkabesku continued to hold the discharged gun in front of him as if he expected it to go off again of its own accord; but Fatia Negra, catching hold of the end of the gun with one hand, wrenched it out of the innkeeper's grasp and brought down the butt of it so violently on the top of his head that he collapsed in a senseless condition.
After that nobody knew what happened.
When Hátszegi and his servants arrived with the patched-up carriage, Makkabesku was still lying on the ground unconscious, his wife was thundering at the locked door, the door of the guest chamber was smashed and the cupboard in the wall had been broken into and pillaged. Curiously enough, while not one of the innkeeper's relics was missing, Hátszegi's box with the 4,000 ducats had disappeared. A little later it was found in the bed of the stream—empty of course.