"Hell!" articulated Shorty, deadened in his tracks.
"I will give this to you when you have returned the black opal to me," stated the scion of the Ancient Tsins.
These words acted as a spring releasing the afflicted man's action. He wheeled about to his partner.
"Now, will yuh gimme that?" he shrieked.
But a mortal terror had at last entered the face of Squint. He saw his partner dying a violent death, and he had no mind to release the uncanny stone which he was now convinced would work the same fate with him, if he should let it go. With the most desperate speed he had ever achieved in his lifetime, his hand flashed for his gun.
There followed a streak of flame and a report against the twilight and the din of the storm. The tall, squint-eyed man sank first to his knees, and then crumpled down into the sand. Death caught the horrified expression in his red-rimmed eyes and held it until he pitched forward, face down, his right hand still wedged in his hip pocket by the sand which had prevented him from drawing the gun.
With fingers shaking out of his control, Shorty turned the limp form over and clawed into one of the inner vest pockets until he triumphantly drew forth the smoldering black opal at the end of its shimmering chain. Half-crawling, half-stumbling, he started with it for the extended hand of Yuen Ming Chu. He had dropped his short weapon behind him, and the troubled sand was crawling down over the upturned form of his victim.
He did not reach the outstretched hand, even though Prince Chu was coming to meet him. His face purpled in blotches, his breath choked, and the grip of convulsion tore him down.
The old son of the Tsins and the Mings stooped over him for a moment and examined the purpled veins and the black, contorted features. He shook his head.
"Too late," he murmured.