Page:Vance--Terence O'Rourke.djvu/59

 "We have time," he debated, "to settle our little affair before the return of madame."

"What d'ye mean, monsieur?" asked O'Rourke, wide-eyed.

"I'll take you at your word," concluded Chambret, arising suddenly. "You shall give me satisfaction now."

"The divvle ye say!"

O'Rourke, too, got upon his feet.

"Precisely. We can fight here as comfortably as anywhere. The room was designed for absolute quiet; the walls are sound proof."

"Faith!" cried the Irishman. "D'ye mean we're to duel with pistols—here?"

"Just so, monsieur."

"But—the weapons?"

Chambret pulled open a drawer of the desk, peered within and removed from it a revolver.

"This," he indicated.

"But that's only one!"

"All that will be necessary, monsieur. We will let the cards decide." He took from another drawer a deck of playing cards—new.

"We will deal, monsieur," he continued, "one to me, one to you, card by card. He who receives the ace of spades—You comprehend?"

"Suicide, d'ye mean?"

"No. The unlucky one of us to stand at the farther end of the room; the other to remain here with the revolver, to count three, aim and fire instantly. Are you agreeable?"

O'Rourke whistled his admiration—an emotion not, however, untinged with perturbation.

"Ye have your nerve with ye, if ye are in earnest," he