The Chief took a step forward, and I saw him shake himself roughly as though to throw off the effect of the man’s personality. “We’ll talk about that presently,” he said roughly. “Do you surrender?”
A slow smile crept over the face of the man before us, a smile so utterly mirthless and inhuman that I instinctively drew back at the sight of it. “Surrender?” he answered slowly. “I shall never do that, to you or any man. But I have been badly served here, and I am fatigued with the dense stupidity of man. To-night I am—going elsewhere—but not with you. Have you anything further to say?”
The Chief drew his revolver and pointed it at the still figure. “Throw up your hands!” he shouted hoarsely, “or I’ll shoot you down like a dog!” And it seemed to me that the Chief’s voice shook a little in spite of him But no words could ever fully describe the inhuman quality and the amazing sense of power which emanated from this black figure, standing quietly before us. It was no wonder that Ivanovitch and Vining, two such dissimilar types, had been willing to serve this so-called Emperor of theirs. I do not blame the Chief in the least, for I felt just the same, only probably more so.
The man in black slowly folded his arms, smiling slightly. “Shoot, then,” he laughed. “It will be amusing!”
The muscles tightened all over my body in anticipation of the coming shot. But for some reason the Chief stood there, staring at the figure, and pointing his revolver still, but making no apparent attempt to pull the trigger.
The Chief told me afterwards that he had hesitated out of sheer curiosity and a desire to take the man alive and learn more about his plans. Perhaps that is true, or perhaps this Emperor succeeded in hypnotizing his enemy and rendering him powerless to shoot. I know that I would have hesitated to shoot, in his place, out of sheer respect for power.
But there was one member of our party who had suffered at this man’s hands and who was actuated by no such scruples. There was a little pause, as I have said, and then suddenly Larry leapt forward, slipped the revolver out of the Chief’s hand and sent three shots in quick succession into the figure before us.
The banging of the revolver echoed in the room, to the accompaniment of a crash of falling glass, and the figure disappeared as though it had dissolved into thin air. We had been staring into a rimless, skillfully arranged mirror. The man with whom we had been talking had been close beside us in the room on the other side of a screen and had projected his voice in some way to come from the vicinity of the mirror.
All this we realized far quicker than it takes to tell it. And with a roar of rage the Chief dashed into the room, with us at his heels. At the same moment there came a hollow, contemptuous laugh from the side of the room and a door opened and closed again quickly.
Without waiting to call directions to his men this time, the Chief dashed for this door and attempted to snatch it open. It resisted his efforts, and I stepped back a little so that he could open it with his jemmy. But the Chief was too much in earnest to stop even for that. He too stepped back. And then he flung himself at that door like a full-back two yards from the goal.