With an oath, Penfield started toward the door--and instantly P.
Sybarite shot at his gun hand like a terrier at the throat of a rat.
Momentarily the shock of the assault staggered the gambler, and as he
gave ground, reeling, P. Sybarite closed one set of sinewy fingers
tight round his right wrist, and with the other seized and wrested the
revolver away. The incident was history in a twinkling: P. Sybarite
sprang back, armed, the situation reversed.

Recovering, Penfield threw him a cry of envenomed spite, and in one
stride left the room. He was turning up the stairs, three steps and an
oath at a bound, by the time P. Sybarite gained the threshold and sped
his departing host with a reminder superfluously ironic:

"The Bizarre at seven--don't forget!"

A breathless imprecation dropped to him from the head of the
staircase. And he chuckled--but cut the chuckle short when a heavy and
metallic clang followed the disappearance of the gambler. The iron
door upstairs had closed, shutting off the second floor from the lower
part of the house, and at the same time consigning P. Sybarite to the
mercies of the police as soon as they succeeded in battering down the
front door.

Now he harboured no whim to figure as the sole victim of the raid--to
be arrested as a common gambler, loaded to the guards with cash and
unable to give any creditable account of himself.

"Damn!" said P. Sybarite thoughtfully.