Lacy leaped to his feet, but Westcott’s gun rose steadily, and the man stood with clenched hands, helpless in his tracks.

“Who says that?” he demanded.

“I am mentioning no names at present, but the very fact that I know these things ought to be sufficient.  You better sit down, Lacy, before you forget yourself and get hurt.  If you imagine this gun isn’t loaded, a single step forward will test it.  Sit down!  I am not through yet.”

There was a quiet, earnest threat in the voice which Lacy understood, the sort of threat which meant strict attention to business, and he relaxed into his chair.

“I’ll get you for this, Westcott,” he muttered savagely, hate burning in his eyes.  “I haven’t played my last cards—­yet.”

The miner smiled grimly, but with no relaxation of vigilance.  He was into it now, and proposed seeing it through.

“I have a few left myself,” he returned soberly.  “Your man Moore drove south, taking the road leading into the Shoshone desert, and he had another one of your gang with him.  Then you, and two others, went back into the hotel, using the outside stairs.  I take it the two others were Enright, here, and Ned Beaton.”

He leaned forward, his face set like flint.

“Now see here, Lacy.  I know these things.  I can prove them by a perfectly competent witness.  It is up to you to answer my questions, and answer them straight.  I’ve got you two fellows dead to rights anyway you look at it.  If you dare lay hands on me I’ll kill you; if you refuse to tell me what I want to know, I’ll swear out warrants inside of thirty minutes.  Now what do you choose?”

For the first time Lacy’s eyes wavered, their defiance gone, as he glanced aside at Enright, who had collapsed in his chair, a mere heavily breathing, shapeless thing.  The sight of the coward seemed to stiffen him to a species of resistance.

“If I answer—­what then?” he growled desperately.

“What is offered me?”

Westcott moistened his lips.  He had not before faced the situation from this standpoint, yet, with only one thought in his mind, he answered promptly.

“I am not the law,” he said, “and all I am interested in now is the release of Fred Cavendish and Stella Donovan.  I’ll accomplish that if it has to be over your dead bodies.  Beyond this, I wash my hands of the whole affair.  What I want to know is—­where are these two?”

“Would you believe me if I said I did not know?”

“No, Lacy.  It has come down to the truth, or your life.  Where is Pasqual Mendez?”

He heard no warning, no sound of movement, yet some change in the expression of the man’s eyes confronting him caused him to slightly turn his head so as to vaguely perceive a shadow behind.  It was all so quickly, silently done, he barely had time to throw up one hand in defence, when his arms were gripped as though in a vise, and he was thrown backward to the floor, the chair crushed beneath his weight.  Lacy fairly leaped on his prostrate body, forgetting his gun lying on the desk in the violence of hate, his hands clutching at the exposed throat.  For an instant Westcott was so dazed and stunned by this sudden attack from behind as to lie there prone and helpless, fairly crushed beneath the bodies of his two antagonists.