Leaving his pistol lying where he had put it down, he crossed the attic, and with a pencil he took from his pocket drew a circle on the panel of the wardrobe door that Rupert had split with the inkpot he had thrown.

In the centre of the circle he marked a dot, and turned smilingly to the frowning and suspicious Rupert.

“There you are,” he said, and made another circle near the first one.  “Now you put a bullet into the middle of this circle and I’ll put one afterwards through the second circle, and the one who is nearest to the dots I’ve marked, wins.  What have you to say to that?  Seems to me better than our killing each other.  Isn’t it?”

“I think you’re playing the fool for some reason of your own,” answered Rupert.  “There’s only one thing I want to know from you.  Where is Ella?”

“Let me know how you can shoot,” answered Deede Dawson, “and I’ll tell you, by all that’s holy, I will.”

Rupert hesitated.  He did not understand all this, he could not imagine what motive was in Deede Dawson’s mind, though it was certainly true enough that once they began shooting at each other neither man was at all likely to survive, for Rupert knew he would not miss and he did not think Deede Dawson would either.

Above all, there was the one thing he wished to know, the one consideration that weighed with him above all others—­what had become of Ella?  And this time there had been in Deede Dawson’s voice an accent of twisted and malign sincerity that seemed to say he really would be willing to tell the truth about her if Rupert would gratify his whim about this sort of shooting-match that he was suggesting.

The purpose of it Rupert could not understand, but it did not seem to him there would be any risk of harm in agreeing, for Deede Dawson was standing so far away from his own weapon he could not well be contemplating any immediate mischief or treachery.

It did occur to him that the pistol he held might be loaded in one chamber only and that Deede Dawson might be scheming to induce him to throw away his solitary cartridge.

But a glance reassured him on that point.

“Let me see how you can shoot,” Deede Dawson repeated, leaning carelessly with folded arms against the wall a little distance away.  “And I promise you I’ll tell you where Ella is.”

Rupert lifted his pistol and was indeed on the very point of firing when he caught a glimpse of such evil triumph and delight in Deede Dawson’s cold eyes that he hesitated and lowered the weapon, and at the same time, looking more closely, searching more intently for some indication of Deede Dawson’s hidden purpose, he noticed, caught in the crack of the wardrobe door, a tiny shred of some blue material only just visible.

He remembered that sometimes of an afternoon Ella had been accustomed to wear a frock made of a material exactly like that of which so tiny a fragment showed now in the crack of the wardrobe door.