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Updated: June 1, 2025
"But that would be encouraging fighting here, Jim, and you know what the rules are. I I wish I might er forget it, but I don't think I conscientiously can." Mr. Conklin nodded. After a moment he said, with a chuckle: "That was a clever punch of Durkin's. I'm glad we got there for the knock-out." "Durkin appeared much lighter than Beaufort, too," replied Mr.
He had quietly witnessed, at Algeciras, the Prince's adroit card "riffling" in the sun-parlors of The Reina Cristina, when the gouty ex-ambassador to Persia had parted company with many cumbersome dollars. Durkin's only course, in that time of adversity and humility, had been one of silence.
Next came a japanned-tin box, which proved to hold nothing but a file of quite unintelligible, Seidlitz-powder-colored papers, and then what seemed, to Durkin's exploring fingers, to be a few small morocco cases. The question flashed through his mind: What if, after all, the money he was looking for was not to be found! He struck still another match, with impatient hands.
But the triumph suddenly died out of her face. She was only in time to hear Durkin's sharp cry of anger, and to see his quick spring through the wide door-way, as the guard-door of the elevator closed and the cage shot up into space. "We've missed him!" he gasped, with a cry of rage, as he ran to the door through which MacNutt, in that moment of excitement, had disappeared.
"You know, now, what I have known before you!" whispered MacNutt, into the ear of the tortured Durkin. "You lie!" murmured Durkin's lips, but no sound came from them, for his staring eyes were still on the scene before him. "Listen then, you fool!" was all his tempter whispered back. And they stood together, listening.
For a key had been thrust into the lock of the anteroom door, and already the handle was being slowly turned back. Durkin's breath quickened and shortened, and his hand swung back to his hip pocket. Then he waited, with his revolver in his hand. He counted and weighed his chances, quickly, one by one, as he stood there, in the black silence.
Four o'clock sounded and he was still dawdling. Then footsteps sounded on the stairs, the door of Number 13 opened and shut, and a minute or two later the wailing of Penny Durkin's violin broke onto the silence of the deserted dormitory.
There flashed through Frances Durkin's mind, in the momentary silence that fell over that strange company, the consciousness that the triangle was completed; that there, in one room, through a fortuitousness that seemed to her more factitious than actual, stood the three contending and opposing forces.
It was then that the woman flung up her own arms and encircled the stooping Russian in a fierce and passionate grasp. He laughed a little, deep in his throat. She told herself that she was at least imprisoning his hands. Durkin's blow caught the bending figure just at the base of the skull, behind the ear. The impact whipped the head back, and sent the relaxing body forward and down.
"What would we do, Jim," she asked, after a second long and unbroken silence, "what would we do if this thing ever brought us face to face with MacNutt again?" "But why should we cross that bridge before we come to it?" was Durkin's answer. She seemed unable, however, to bar back from her mind some disturbing and unwelcome vision of that meeting.
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