“The surviving burglar stood petrified, stooping over his comrade, with the lantern in one shaking hand and the revolver still grasped in the other; and as he stood, he poured out, in a curious, whimpering undertone, an unending torrent of incoherent blasphemies, as appears to be the habit of that type of man when frightened.  I stepped silently behind him and looked over his shoulder at the expiring criminal, speculating on what he would do next.  At the moment he was paralyzed and imbecile with terror, and I had a strong inclination to dispatch him then and there; but the same odd impulse that I had noticed on the last occasion constrained me to dally with him.  Again I was possessed by a strange, savage playfulness like that which impels a cat or leopard to toy daintily and tenderly with its prey for a while before the final scrunch.

“We remained thus motionless for more than half a minute in a silence broken only by his blasphemous mutterings.  Then, quite suddenly, he stood up and began to flash his lantern on the stairs and about the hall until at length its light fell full on my face which was within a foot of his own.  And at that apparition he uttered a most singular cry, like that of a young goat, and started back.  Another moment and he would have raised his pistol arm, but I had foreseen this and was beforehand with him.  Even as his hand rose, the concussor struck the outer side of his arm, between the shoulder and the elbow, on the exact spot where the musculo-spiral nerve turns round the bone.  The effect was most interesting.  The sudden nerve stimulus produced an equally sudden contraction of the extensors.  The forearm straightened with a jerk, the fingers shot out straight and the released revolver flew clattering along the hall floor.

“Anatomy has its uses even in a midnight scuffle.

“The suddenness of my appearance and the promptness of my action paralyzed him completely.  He stared at me in abject terror and gibbered inarticulately.  Only for a few moments, however.  Then he turned and darted towards the street door.

“But I did not mean to let him escape.  In a twinkling I was after him and had him by the collar.  He uttered a savage snarl and dropped the lamp on the mat to free his hands; and, as the spring switch was released, the light went out, leaving us in total darkness.  Now that he was at bay, he struggled furiously, and I could hear him snorting and cursing as he wriggled in my grasp.  I had to drop the concussor that I might hold him with both hands, and it was well that I did, for he suddenly got one hand free and struck.  It was a vicious blow and had it not been partly stopped by my elbow the adventure would have ended very differently, for I felt the point of a knife sweep across my chest, ripping open my pajama jacket and making a quite unpleasant little flesh-wound.  On this I gripped him round the chest, pinioning both his arms as well as I could and trying to get possession of the knife, while he made frantic struggles to aim another blow.