“Let ’em try.  Once I get my hand on the ringleader, the rest may riot and be damned.”

Although he had made less display than had the Judge, the receiver was no less deeply worried about Helen, of whom no news came.  His jealousy, fanned to red heat by the discovery of her earlier defection, was enhanced fourfold by the thought of this last adventure.  Something told him there was treachery afoot, and when she did not return at dawn he began to fear that she had cast in her lot with the rioters.  This aroused a perfect delirium of doubt and anger till he reasoned further that Struve, having gone with her, must also be a traitor.  He recognized the menace in this fact, knowing the man’s venality, so began to reckon carefully its significance.  What could Struve do?  What proof had he?  McNamara started, and, seizing his hat, hurried straight to the lawyer’s office and let himself in with the key he carried.  It was light enough for him to decipher the characters on the safe lock as he turned the combination, so he set to work scanning the endless bundles within, hoping that after all the man had taken with him no incriminating evidence.  Once the searcher paused at some fancied sound, but when nothing came of it drew his revolver and laid it before him just inside the safe door and close beneath his hand, continuing to run through the documents while his uneasiness increased.  He had been engaged so for some time when he heard the faintest creak at his back, too slight to alarm and just sufficient to break his tension and cause him to jerk his head about.  Framed in the open door stood Roy Glenister watching him.

McNamara’s astonishment was so genuine that he leaped to his feet, faced about, and prompted by a secretive instinct swung to the safe door as though to guard its contents.  He had acted upon the impulse before realizing that his weapon was inside and that now, although the door was not locked, it would require that one dangerous, yes, fatal, second to open it.

The two men stared at each other for a time, silent and malignant, their glances meeting like blades; in the older man’s face a look of defiance, in the younger’s a dogged and grim-purposed enmity.  McNamara’s first perturbation left him calm, alert, dangerous; whereas the continued contemplation of his enemy worked in Glenister to destroy his composure, and his purpose blazed forth unhidden.

He stood there unkempt and soiled, the clean sweep of jaw and throat overgrown with a three days’ black stubble, his hair wet and matted, his whole left side foul with clay where he had fallen in the darkness.  A muddy red streak spread downward from a cut above his temple, beneath his eyes were sagging folds, while the flicker at his mouth corners betrayed the high nervous pitch to which he was keyed.

“I have come for the last act, McNamara; now we’ll have it out, man to man.”

The politician shrugged his shoulders.  “You have the drop on me.  I am unarmed.”  At which the miner’s face lighted fiercely and he chuckled.