One quality Hamilton Burton possessed.  If he was to die he would leave no satisfaction of final cowardice to comfort his assassin’s self-destruction.  He would attack—­but a sudden thought stayed him.

“If we are to have a death struggle here,” he asked with a strange composure, “will you give me a moment—­for a matter that had no bearing on your determination?”

Haswell yet again shook his head with his executioner’s smile as he sardonically inquired, “Time to get another gun?”

“No.  To tear up a note to the coroner—­unless you will be good enough to do it for me.  If I am not to kill myself there is no advantage in an ante-mortem confession!”

“What difference does it make?  To me it seems trivial.”

“Just this—­that my family will save my insurance out of the wreck.”

“And Paul may once more sing golden songs to the wives of other men—­not that I so much resent Paul.  Without you he would have been harmless enough—­but society’s safer with him poor.”

Hamilton Burton had caught a rift in the clouds and with this denial his calmness deserted him for passion.  The old family love, strong even though he had himself so violated it, burst into flame in his heart.  Once more he would fight for those he was leaving.  Why had he never thought of the window himself?  That might logically seem accidental, yet his brain had not served him well of late.  It had been clouded and unresourceful—­and he had invented no method of masking the authorship of his death.  His enemy had suggested it—­but first there must be a moment to destroy the confession which would rob his mother of the one asset which might be saved to her.  With an oath he leaped upon his visitor, and fought tigerishly.  But for all his superb physical fitness and strength it was like a child leaping upon a powerful gladiator.

With one mighty arm about his waist crushing him until his bones seemed to crack and one huge hand cutting off the gasp of his throat, his body was bent back in this gorilla embrace and a purple mist spread darkly before his eyes.  He had just enough tremor of consciousness left to know that he hung limp and was being lifted and swung to and fro as one swings a sack which he means to toss into a cart.

A few moments later the giant stood panting from his exertion as he stretched out a steady hand for the pistol which lay on the window ledge.

CHAPTER XXX

In a certain dictionary appears this substantive and this definition.  “PARASITE (par’-a-sit), n. one who frequents the table of a rich man and gains his favor by flattery; a hanger-on; an animal or plant nourished by another to which it attaches itself. (Greek.)”

If the animal or plant to which these other animals or plants attach themselves goes first to its death, it is inevitable that its parasites must speedily follow.  There is no longer anything upon which to feed.