How it happened I cannot describe, for the simple reason that I don’t remember.  I know that it was a short, sharp dash, that the fight was a fight of fists in which guns were discharged wildly in the air against the will of the gunner.  But from the moment when Kennedy’s voice rang out in the door, “Hands up!” to the time that I saw that we had the robbers lined up with their backs against the heavy cases of the precious metal for which they had planned and risked so much, it is a blank of grim death-struggle.

I remember my surprise at seeing one of them a woman, and I thought I must be mistaken.  I looked about.  No; there was Maude Euston standing just beside Lane.

I think it must have been that which recalled me and made me realize that it was a reality and not a dream.  The two women stood glaring at each other.

“The woman in the tea-room!” exclaimed Miss Euston.  “It was about this—­robbery—­then, that I heard you talking the other afternoon.”

I looked at the face before me.  It was, had been, a handsome face.  But now it was cold and hard, with that heartless expression of the adventuress.  The men seemed to take their plight hard.  But, as she looked into the clear, gray eyes of the other woman, the adventuress seemed to gain rather than lose in defiance.

“Robbery?” she repeated, bitterly.  “This is only a beginning.”

“A beginning.  What do you mean?”

It was Lane who spoke.  Slowly she turned toward him.

“You know well enough what I mean.”

The implication that she intended was clear.  She had addressed the remark to him, but it was a stab at Maude Euston.

“I know only what you wanted me to do—­and I refused.  Is there more still?”

I wondered whether Lane could really have been involved.

“Quick—­what do you mean?” demanded Kennedy, authoritatively.

The woman turned to him: 

“Suppose this news of the robbery is out?  What will happen?  Do you want me to tell you, young lady?” she added, turning again to Maude Euston.  “I’ll tell you.  The stock of the Continental Express Company will fall like a house of cards.  And then?  Those who have sold it at the top price will buy it back again at the bottom.  The company is sound.  The depression will not last—­perhaps will be over in a day, a week, a month.  Then the operators can send it up again.  Don’t you see?  It is the old method of manipulation in a new form.  It is a war-stock gamble.  Other stocks will be affected the same way.  This is our reward—­what we can get out of it by playing this game for which the materials are furnished free.  We have played it—­and lost.  The manipulators will get their reward on the stock-market this morning.  But they must still reckon with us—­even if we have lost.”  She said it with a sort of grim humor.

“And you have put Granville Barnes out of the way, first?” I asked, remembering the chlorin.  She laughed shrilly.