us that such a position would not inconvenience him in the least.
Without looking down, he broke open the Webley and shook the six cartridges out. He dropped them into his pockets. Then, as if thinking better of this, he drew one back out and inserted it in the gun, spun the chambers, and closed the gun. It was as if he was performing some trick for our benefit.
With the revolver in his right hand, he raised his left and pulled the trigger of Von Herder’s pistol. With less sound than a cork popping, the weapon discharged and I ducked my head as the remaining window behind us shattered. What was his game? For it was a game, a sport for an asylum of the criminally insane. Why not kill us then and there?
“You do not think well of me, Mr. Holmes?”
As coolly as if he was declining a second slice of cake at a tea party, Holmes replied. “I cannot say that I often think of you at all, Colonel Moran.”
Moran chuckled. “You know that is not true, sir! I should be offended if it were. But however badly you may view me, I am a sportsman. I do not kill in cold blood—not even you. I might shoot you both now. But that is not my way with a man of your calibre, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, even though you have caused me some considerable difficulties. You deserve a better end.”
Mad as a hatter!
“Indeed?” Again, Holmes made the word sound like an expression of polite boredom.
“We must have this thing over between us, Mr. Holmes. The world cannot any longer contain us both. That is all. But you shall have a sporting chance.”
This time there was no reply, and Moran was left to continue his own demented monologue.
“There are two guns, you see? Mine and the doctor’s. We shall duel at this distance. At so short a range, we may expect that the contest will soon be decisive. They tell me you are an opponent worth challenging to a match at firearms, Mr. Holmes. Very well. You are unfamiliar with the Von Herder pistol, I daresay, but no matter. You are very familiar with your friend’s Webley revolver. Excellent. You shall have his revolver and this one bullet. And you shall fire first. You may check that the chamber brings the cartridge to the top in readiness. I have a certain knack of dodging bullets, but you will agree that if you miss me at this distance, you deserve neither your reputation nor your life. In that case, I shall have my turn after yours. Is that not fair?”
There must be a trick in this, though I could not yet see what it was. I knew that he intended to kill us both, but this game would also serve some peculiar vanity of his own.
“And in either event,” Holmes inquired politely, “what is to become of my colleague?”
Moran gave another of his light-hearted chuckles.
“If you succeed, his difficulties are resolved. If not, then I fear we shall have to see what we shall see.”
“And if I should refuse.…”
“You would be a far more stupid man than the world takes you for, Mr. Holmes! Now, do not disappoint me! You may miss me, of course. But even then, I may forego my right of reply. I am a hunter, sir, and more than half my pleasure is the thrill of the risk. I propose to be your executioner. But, as they used to say in the days of steel, the delight of an execution is not in the slovenly butchering of a man but in cutting the head from the shoulders with a single sword-stroke and leaving it standing in its place. Is that not so? Come, now.”
Holding the Webley by its muzzle, he laid it on the deck and then with his foot sent it scudding across to the toecaps of Sherlock Holmes.
I measured the distance between us. I could never reach him before he fired at me. But the moment Moran raised his gun to take aim at Holmes, I would try to charge him down as I had charged many an opposing forward on the rugby ground at Blackheath in my student days. He might still shoot us both. But he must first turn and shoot at me before I could reach him. That would give Holmes just a moment’s chance to spring and finish what I had started. It was a slim chance, but it was the