Understand ?" How long this singular psychological combat might have lasted before a nerve quivered somewhere and brought the denouement of a double death, there is no telling.

For accident (or fate) intervened to pluck these antagonists back into life and rob the gloating Pierre of the happiness of seeing two men perish without danger to himself.

Something of uncertain shape, but of a blue color, loomed vaguely behind Pierre's head; loomed and suddenly descended to the accompaniment of a piercing shriek.

Pierre's pistol went off, but he had evidently been stricken between the shoulders; the ball went wild, and the pistol itself dropped from his hand, another cartridge exploding as it hit the floor.
The next instant Pierre tumbled headlong through the hole, landing upon Loge, who, not braced for the shock, went down himself.
As the two men struggled to rise a strange figure precipitated itself from the room above, feet first, and hit both of them, knocking them down again.

It was a tall man, thin and lank, clad only in a suit of silk pajamas of the color known as baby blue; he was barefoot, and Cleggett, with that lucid grasp of detail which comes to men oftener in nightmares than in real life, noticed that he had a bunion at the large joint of his right great toe.
If the man was startling, he was no less startled himself.