As I deliberated, Fate seemed to solve my problem, for my fingers touched and closed about a smooth object that lay on the ground. For a moment I thought it was the branch of a tree. But no branch grew so smooth. A polished stave? It had been fashioned and grooved.... It was a Ray rod.
If I had doubted my mission I ceased to do so in that moment. I felt along the weapon in the darkness, from the brass guard, which stood up, leaving the button unprotected, to the little glass bulb near the head, through which the destroying Ray would stream. I raised the Ray rod and aimed it.
The solar light moved in the vault, and the shadow cast by the wall went back and forth as Sanson tramped to and fro. He was muttering to himself. He passed across the gap, and the little light shone on me. But he did not look toward me, and then he was behind the wall again and the light vanished.
Next time he passed I would fire. Yet I did not fire, and back and forth, and forth and back he tramped, talking to himself as any lesser man might have done. I had no compunction at all; I would have killed him as I would have killed a deadly snake; and yet, so diabolical was the fascination he exercised over me, I could not press the button.
I gathered my resolution together. I would fire when he passed the gap again. No, the next time. Well, the next, then. My fingers tightened on the handle. I saw Sanson emerge, the spark of light in his hand. The tight, white tunic was in the center of the gap. Now! I pressed the button, aiming at his heart.
The glass of the Ray rod grew fiery red. The button seared my hand, and a smell of charred wood filled my nostrils. I dropped the weapon, and it fell clattering to the ground. Sanson was standing in the gap, unharmed.
My Ray rod was the one that I had unwittingly discharged on the occasion when I scrambled for the cellar roof. It had given me life then; it seemed now to have brought me death. Of course it was useless till it had been recharged; now it emitted only the red-mull rays: heat, not cold combustion.
Sanson had halted as I aimed. Now, at the sound of the falling Ray rod he sprang forward and turned his solar light on me. His poise was a crouching leopard’s. In his left hand he held the light, and in his right was his own Ray rod, covering me.
I looked at him, I stared at him, I rose upon my feet and staggered to him. Something in his poise, the whitening hair, brushed back, something in the man’s soul that the years could not conceal reminded me.... I stood looking into the face of Herman Lazaroff!