He laid a huge Colt .45 on the table, and opened the cylinder and inserted one cartridge, then closed the cylinder and spun it, and laid the gun back on the table. Oh, it was impossibly melodramatic, it was preposterous; but remember that the entire situation was preposterous, and that it was melodrama we lived, outside the law and therefore beyond it.

We knew the rules of Russian Roulette, so-called, and we watched, and the strangest most melodramatic thing of all is that no one doubted for a moment that the game would be played out. Elsewhere, among other men, perhaps the bluff would have chilled; but not these two. They stared at each other in silence, and then the German reached for the gun and set the muzzle to his temple and squeezed the trigger.

Click.

Clyde picked it up deliberately, set it to his temple.

Click.

It was Buchalter's turn, and then it was Clyde's again, and both times the gun's hammer clicked on an empty chamber. Now it was the German's turn, and there were but two chambers left, and the cartridge the old Chinese had inserted must be in one of them. Buchalter had one chance in two, and he knew it, and yet his face was still impassive, and his hand, as he reached for the gun, neither shook nor hesitated.

Click.

Buchalter's face was no longer stolid as he laid the gun back on the table with only the sixth, the last, the loaded chamber still unfired. No sign of relief showed on his face, he had not been afraid of death, but only triumph as he watched the Englishman.

And then Clyde, expressionless and unhurried, picked up the gun and set it once again to his temple, and suddenly Buchalter cried, "Nein!" and grabbed at the gun.

But Clyde's chair went over with a crash, and the Englishman backed quickly away from the table. He stood alone in the center of the room, erect and proud and boyish-barekneed in his silly English shorts, and like an English gentleman he set the gun to his head.

"To die so well!" the German whispered, and it was like a prayer, but the horror on his face was not unmixed with regret. And then the Englishman squeezed the trigger, and the gun clicked harmlessly, and old Soong stepped up with lithe grace and took it away and said, soft and feline and wise and very Chinese, "No gentleman would have used the dummy cartridge, of course; only a Chinese businessman unwilling to sacrifice either of two able associates-"

The German and the Englishman were staring at each other openly now, and there was a growing respect in their eyes that washed out the enmity there, and old Soong's voice had a sudden lash in it.

"Men of proven honor," he said bitterly, "men of different countries and varied ideals, discuss your differences like gentlemen, and let your honor and your courage and the breeding that has been granted you bind you together. You wish to avenge yourselves upon me for the shabby trick I have played on you? Then go, discuss the means of your revenge-“

Clyde was looking down his long nose at Buchalter, and then Buchalter's ruddy cheeks split in a wide grin, and Clyde answered it, and they went out of the room together, with the old Chinaman watching them, impassive as ever.