“Hand it over,” Taylor snapped.
“I have no necklace,” Denby told him.
“Then I’ll have to search you,” he cried, coming to him and going through his pockets with the practised hand of one who knows where to look, covering him the while with the revolver.
“I’ll make you pay for this,” Denby cried savagely, as Taylor unceremoniously spun him around.
“Will you give it to me,” Taylor demanded when he had drawn blank, “or shall I have to upset the place by searching for it?”
“How can I get it for you with my hands up in the air?” Denby asked after a pause. “Let me put my hands down and I’ll help you.”
Taylor considered for a moment. Few men were better in a rough-and-tumble fight than he, and he had little fear of this beaten man before him. “You haven’t got a gun,” he said, “so take ’em down, but don’t you fool with me.”
Denby moved over to the writing-desk and picked up a heavy beaten copper ash-tray with match-box attached. He balanced it in his hand for a moment. “Not a bad idea is it?” he demanded smiling; and then, before Taylor could reach for it had hurled it with the strong arm and practised eye of an athlete straight at the patent burglar alarm a few feet distant.
There was a smashing of glass and then, an instant later, the turning off of light and a plunge into blackness. And in the gloom, during which Taylor thrashed about him wildly, there came from all parts of the house the steady peal of the electrical alarms newly set in motion.
And last of all there was the report of the revolver and a woman’s shriek and the falling of a heavy body on the floor, and then a silence.