first sets his eyes on you." They pressed upon him now with a deadly
significance. For the first time he understood all that Conniston had
meant. His danger was not alone in the possibility of being recognized
as John Keith; it lay also in the hazard of NOT being recognized as
Derwent Conniston.

If the thought had come to him to turn back, if the voice of fear and a
premonition of impending evil had urged him to seek freedom in another
direction, their whispered cautions were futile in the thrill of the
greater excitement that possessed him now. That there was a third hand
playing in this game of chance in which Conniston had already lost his
life, and in which he was now staking his own, was something which gave
to Keith a new and entirely unlooked-for desire to see the end of the
adventure. The mental vision of his own certain fate, should he lose,
dissolved into a nebulous presence that no longer oppressed nor
appalled him. Physical instinct to fight against odds, the inspiration
that presages the uncertainty of battle, fired his blood with an
exhilarating eagerness. He was anxious to stand face to face with
McDowell. Not until then would the real fight begin. For the first time
the fact seized upon him that the Englishman was wrong--he would NOT
win or lose in the first moment of the Inspector's scrutiny. In that
moment he could lose--McDowell's cleverly trained eyes might detect the
fraud; but to win, if the game was not lost at the first shot, meant an
exciting struggle. Today might be his Armageddon, but it could not
possess the hour of his final triumph.

He felt himself now like a warrior held in leash within sound of the
enemy's guns and the smell of his powder. He held his old world to be
his enemy, for civilization meant people, and the people were the
law--and the law wanted his life. Never had he possessed a deeper