He was in full evening dress with a camellia in his button-hole.
He stepped back lightly with cat-like steps, his arms a little curved, his fingers all extended.
I saw his face. It was convulsed with the satanic fury of an old Japanese mask. Line for line, it was just like that, and it was also the face of the bland and smiling man I had seen two hours before at the restaurant of The Golden Snail.
I felt something warm and trembling at my side. Juanita was clinging to me and I put my arm around her waist. Through the open door there now came another figure.
A quiet, resonant voice cut into the tense, horrible silence.
"Quick, Mark Antony Midwinter--that's your door, quick--quick!"
The big man paused for an instant and a hissing spitting noise came from his mouth.
There was a sharp crack and a great mirror on the wall shivered in pieces. There was another, and then the big man turned and literally bounded over the soft carpet, flung himself through the door and disappeared.
Gideon Mendoza Morse advanced into the drawing-room, smiling to himself and looking down at a little steel-blue automatic in his hand.
Then Juanita and I came out of the alcove, hand in hand, and he saw us.
Gideon Morse still had the little steel-blue automatic pistol in his hand. He was actually smiling and humming a little tune when he turned and saw Juanita and myself coming out of the alcove.
In a flash his hand dropped the pistol into the pocket of his dinner jacket and his face changed.
"Santa Maria!" he said in Spanish, and then, "Juanita, Sir Thomas Kirby!"
"You remember you gave me an appointment to-night, Mr. Morse," I stammered.
He said no more, for with a little gasp Juanita sank into a heap upon the floor. We had loosened hands directly the millionaire turned towards us and I was too late to catch her.
"The bell," he said curtly, and I ran to the side of the room and pressed the button hard and long.
Wow! but these money emperors of the world are well served! In a second, so it seemed, the room was full of people. The young secretary, a couple of maids, a dark foreign-looking man in a morning coat and a black tie whom I took to be the valet, and finally a gigantic fellow in tweeds with a battered face as big as a ham and arms which reached almost to his knees.