twirled his mustachios in relieved approval. Madame laughed from her place on the couch and picked up a book, watching Montmorency over the cover of its pages. As for that gentleman, he masked his satisfaction by the practical business of placing on the table before Carrados the accessories of the letter.
“Put into your own words the message that I outlined just now.”
“Perhaps to make it altogether natural I had better write on a page of the notebook that I always use,” suggested Carrados.
“Do you wish to make it natural?” demanded Montmorency, with latent suspicion.
“If the miscarriage of your plan is to result in my head being knocked—yes, I do,” was the reply.
“Good!” chuckled Dompierre, and sought to avoid Mr Montmorency’s cold glance by turning on the electric table-lamp for the blind man’s benefit. Madame Dompierre laughed shrilly.
“Thank you, Monsieur,” said Carrados, “you have done quite right. What is light to you is warmth to me—heat, energy, inspiration. Now to business.”
He took out the pocket-book he had spoken of and leisurely proceeded to flatten it down upon the table before him. As his tranquil, pleasant eyes ranged the room meanwhile it was hard to believe that the shutters of an impenetrable darkness lay between them and the world. They rested for a moment on the two accomplices who stood beyond the table, picked out Madame Dompierre lolling on the sofa on his right, and measured the proportions of the long, narrow room. They seemed to note the positions of the window at the one end and the door almost at the other, and even to take into account the single pendent electric light which up till then had been the sole illuminant.
“You prefer pencil?” asked Montmorency.
“I generally use it for casual purposes. But not,” he added, touching the point critically, “like this.”
Alert for any sign of retaliation, they watched him take an insignificant penknife from his pocket and begin to trim the pencil. Was there in his mind any mad impulse to force conclusions with that puny weapon? Dompierre worked his face into a fiercer expression and touched reassuringly the handle of his knife. Montmorency looked on for a moment, then, whistling softly to himself, turned his back on the table and strolled towards the window, avoiding Madame Nina’s pursuant eye.
Then, with overwhelming suddenness, it came, and in its form altogether unexpected.
Carrados had been putting the last strokes to the pencil, whittling it down upon the table. There had been no hasty movement, no violent act to give them warning; only the little blade had pushed itself nearer and nearer to the electric light cord lying there … and suddenly and instantly the room was plunged into absolute darkness.
“To the door, Dom!” shouted Montmorency in a flash. “I am at the window. Don’t let him pass and we are all right.”
“I am here,” responded Dompierre from the door.
“He will not attempt to pass,” came the quiet voice of Carrados from across the room. “You are now all exactly where I want you. You are both covered. If either moves an inch, I fire—and remember that I shoot by sound, not sight.”
“But—but what does it mean?” stammered Montmorency, above the despairing wail of Madame Dompierre.
“It means that we are now on equal terms—three blind men in a dark room. The numerical advantage that you possess is counterbalanced by the fact that you are out of your element—I am in mine.”
“Dom,” whispered Montmorency across the dark space, “strike a match. I have none.”
“I would not, Dompierre, if I were you,” advised Carrados, with a short laugh. “It might be dangerous.” At once his voice seemed to leap into a passion. “Drop that matchbox,” he cried. “You are standing on the brink of your grave, you fool! Drop it, I say; let me hear it fall.”
A breath of thought—almost too short to call a pause—then a little thud of surrender sounded from the carpet by the door. The two conspirators seemed to hold their breath.
“That is right.” The placid voice once more resumed its sway. “Why cannot things be agreeable? I hate to have to shout, but you seem far from grasping the situation yet. Remember that I do not take the slightest risk. Also please remember, Mr Montmorency, that the action even of a hair-trigger automatic scrapes slightly as it comes up. I remind you of that for your own good, because if you are so ill-advised as to think of trying to pot me in the dark, that noise gives me a fifth of a second start of you. Do you by any chance know Zinghi’s in Mercer Street?”
“The shooting gallery?” asked Mr Montmorency a little sulkily.
“The same. If you happen to come through this alive and are interested you might ask Zinghi to show you a target of mine that he keeps. Seven shots at twenty yards, the target indicated by four watches, none of them so loud as the one you are wearing. He keeps it as a curiosity.”
“I wear no watch,” muttered Dompierre, expressing his thought aloud.
“No, Monsieur Dompierre, but you wear a heart, and that not on your sleeve,” said Carrados. “Just now it is quite as loud as Mr Montmorency’s watch. It is more central too—I shall not have to allow any margin. That is right; breathe naturally”—for the unhappy Dompierre had given a gasp of apprehension. “It does not make any difference to me, and after a time holding one’s breath becomes really painful.”
“Monsieur,” declared Dompierre earnestly, “there was no intention of submitting you to injury, I swear. This Englishman did but speak within his hat. At the most extreme you would have been but bound and gagged. Take care: killing is a dangerous game.”
“For you—not for me,” was the bland rejoinder. “If you kill me you will be hanged for it. If I kill you I shall be honourably acquitted. You can imagine the scene—the sympathetic court—the recital of your villainies—the story of my indignities. Then with stumbling feet and groping hands the helpless blind man is led forward to give evidence. Sensation! No, no, it isn’t really fair but I can kill you both with absolute certainty and Providence will be saddled with all the responsibility. Please don’t fidget with your feet, Monsieur Dompierre. I know that you aren’t moving but one is liable to make mistakes.”
“Before I die,” said Montmorency—and for some reason laughed unconvincingly in the dark—“before I die, Mr Carrados, I should really like to know what has happened to the light. That, surely, isn’t Providence?”
“Would it be ungenerous to suggest that you are trying to gain time? You ought to know what has happened. But as it may satisfy you that I have nothing to fear from delay, I don’t mind telling you. In my hand was a sharp knife—contemptible, you were satisfied, as a weapon; beneath my nose the ‘flex’ of the electric lamp. It was only necessary for me to draw the one across the other and the system was short-circuited. Every lamp on that fuse is cut off and in the distributing-box in the hall you will find a burned-out wire. You, perhaps—but Monsieur Dompierre’s experience in plating ought to have put him up to simple electricity.”
“How did you know that there is a distributing-box in the hall?” asked Dompierre, with dull resentment.
“My dear Dompierre, why beat the air with futile questions?” replied Max Carrados.
