Page:Vance--Terence O'Rourke.djvu/307

 Aziz tipped his glass to his lips. As he did so, O'Rourke, who had arisen with them, took his life in his hands and fired. The crack of the shot and the simultaneous crash of the wine-glass as it was shattered in the prince's fingers wrought an instantaneous silence where a moment before there had been loud acclamations.

In the momentary stupefaction that seized upon the conspirators, numbing them mind and body, for the instant, O'Rourke leaped to the doorway.

He held a revolver in each hand. Possibly to each of the nine about the table it seemed as though one muzzle was trained upon his head alone. They stood helpless for a space. O'Rourke, chancing to observe Arabi's face, could have laughed because of its whitish tinge. "Ye will please not move, messieurs," he announced loudly. "I have the drop on ye all, and the man who thinks I cannot see him move will find out his mistake. Messieurs, allow me to give ye a bit of advice: Don't drink that health ye've left untasted. In the long run 'twill be the most unhealthy drink ye ever put in your bellies!"

His shoulders touched the jamb of the doorway.

"Messieurs," he said, "I wish ye the divvle of an uneasy night's rest!"

The Irishman, his eyes keenly alert, held the threshold. Once across that, it would be a flight for his life—hide and seek, he forecast it. "And 'tis the O'Rourke that'll be It, for once," he commented.

But he had reckoned without the spirit of one man—Prince Aziz, who seized upon what he thought was the Irishman's moment of relaxed vigilance.

O'Rourke, however, saw the Egyptian's hand go to his