“Hands up, Ooma!  If you move you are a dead man?”

Nevertheless, he did move.  He seemed to have the agility as well as the semblance of a carnivorous animal.  He bounded sideways towards the wall of the library, picked up the writing-desk, and barricaded himself behind it.  In the same second he produced a small, shining article from his waistcoat pocket, and shouted, in a voice now cracked with rage: 

“Stand back, all of you.  You may shoot me!  I will not be arrested!”

Winter, swearing, scrambled from the floor.  Robert, too, threw off the yelling servant, and rose to his feet.  Alarmed not only by the curious entry made by David Hume and Holden, but also by the racket in the library, other servants were now clamouring at the locked door, for Holden had slipped his left hand behind him and turned the key.  Brett similarly closed the window.  They were five to one, but the one seemed to defy them.

“That be blowed for a tale!” roared the infuriated detective, whose blood was fired by the manner in which he had been floored.  “I arrest you in the King’s name for the murder of Sir Alan Hume-Frazer, and I warn you—­”

Robert Hume-Frazer waited for no preliminary explanation of an official character.  He wanted to feel that man’s bones crack under his grasp.  He had the strong man’s ambition to close with an opponent worthy of his thews and sinews.  Without any warning, he made for the Japanese, who seemed to await his oncoming with singular equanimity, though otherwise quivering with baulked hate.

But Brett had seen something that aroused a lightning-like suspicion.  Twice had the Japanese looked at a small, shining thing in his hand, as though to make sure it was there.  So the barrister was just in time to grasp Robert’s shoulder and hold him back.

“No,” he cried, “you must not touch him.  I command it.  He cannot escape.”

“Then let me have a go at him first,” growled Frazer, whose face was pale with passion.

“No, no.  Leave him to me.  Winter, do you hear me?  Stand back, I say.”

Brett’s imperative tone brooked no disobedience.  Thus, in a segment of a circle, the five enclosed the one against the wall—­Ooma barricaded by the table, the others ready to defeat any stratagem he might endeavour to put in force.

“Now listen to me, Ooma,” said the barrister sternly.  “You must drop that thing you have in your right hand.  You must hold both your hands high above your head.  If you move either of them again I will shoot you.  If you do not obey me before I count five I will shoot you.  One!  Two!  Three!—­”

The Japanese, gasping a horrible sort of sob, three times plunged the instrument he held into his left arm.  Then he flung it straight at Robert.  One would have thought his vengeance would be directed against Brett, whom he must have credited by this time with his capture.

No; he singled out a Hume-Frazer for his last attack.  The instrument struck a button on Robert’s coat and fell to the floor, where it lay twisted out of shape by the force of the impact.