He was strong and athletic, and the insults which the spy had cast upon Lola had caused him to lose his temper. His hands were at Flobecq’s throat.
A second later, however, the spy drew a revolver, and only just in the nick of time did the Englishman manage to turn the barrel aside ere it went off.
Then ensued a fierce and desperate struggle for the weapon—indeed a fight for life.
Hubert held Flobecq’s right wrist in a grip of iron, at the same time endeavouring to obtain possession of the envelope containing the letters. In this latter, however, he was unsuccessful.
Again the weapon went off in the mêlée, the bullet embedding itself in the ceiling, while the two men, locked in each other’s deadly embrace, fell against a table, smashing a large porcelain vase to fragments.
The reports aroused the alarm of the agents of police who, a few seconds later, rushed into the room where they found the two men struggling desperately. But just as they entered, accompanied by the proprietor of the hotel in a state of the utmost alarm, Flobecq discharged his weapon a third time. The bullet struck a huge mirror, shattering it into a thousand pieces.
With the aid of the police agents, Flobecq was, with difficulty, secured, whereupon Hubert—with the one thought uppermost in his mind, that of Lola’s honour—placed his hand swiftly into the inner pocket of his adversary’s coat and abstracted the envelope containing the fateful letters.
“That man is a thief!” yelled the spy, white to the lips with fury. “Arrest him! Arrest him, I say. He has stolen my property.”
Next second, as Hubert drew back and before anyone was aware of it, the man under arrest snatched a heavy police revolver from the hand of one of the men holding him, and fired point-blank at the Englishman.
Again, in the spy’s passion of hatred, his shot went wide of the mark, and Hubert stood unharmed, the letters already safe in his pocket.