Page:MacGrath--The luck of the Irish.djvu/273

 don't want to kill you. Write down where she is and write it straight, for if you don't I'll kill you. There won't be any jiu-jitsu to-night. Write it down." William pushed a slip of paper and a pencil across the table. "Give it to me straight. I'm not afraid of anything or anybody to-night."

Camden was actually hypnotized. Slowly he wrote across the face of the slip of paper. Grogan!

As William reached for the address, Camden awoke to the realization that he had been hypnotized. He picked up his glass, ostensibly to drink; instead, with a deft turn of the wrist he dashed the wine toward William's eyes, hoping to retrieve the chamois bag and escape. But William was abnormally alert. He anticipated the movement, ducked in time, and before Camden's arm had reached the full stretch of the treacherous fling William struck. The blow hit Camden squarely in the face, and he crumpled up and lay quietly in the puddle of wine.

William caught up the address. He gazed about coolly. At one end of the veranda were some ladies and gentlemen chatting over late coffee. None of them moved; they were obeying the Oriental axiom—keep out of the other man's muddle if you can. William stirred Camden with his foot and the man rolled over on his back.

"I guess you won't be pretty to look at for a long time to come," was William's sole comment.

And now for the jackal's master! He walked hurriedly toward the street. He did not bother to engage a rickshaw. He knew the way, even