Chance backed away.

Grawson advanced a step.

“I can’t,” said Chance.

With a cry of rage, almost a berserk fury, the huge body of Lester Grawson lunged at Chance, those great hands opened like the clawed paws of the grizzly he was, but Chance shoved the barrel of the pistol sharply, deeply into the diaphragm of the lunging figure, and Grawson doubled up in agony, his hands moving out to clutch at nothing. With the butt of the pistol Chance struck Grawson across the back of the neck, and then, carefully, holding the dazed man by the collar, he struck the man again, a dangerous blow, but with a physician’s skill, not to open nor injure the skull, and the body of Lester Grawson lay on the stones of the alley.

Chance stood over the man, his own head a terrifying whirl of images. Chance stood over the man, scared. He held the muzzle of the pistol to the back of the man’s neck, where the bullet would sever the vertebrae, but he did not fire, he could not, nor did he want to.

Once before he had stood thus, on a field north of Charleston, and had known that he would run, and that somehow he would never escape.

Once again his hand moved, and his finger touched the trigger, but gently, and the weapon did not fire.

Chance replaced the weapon in his bag, and turned away.

Grawson would come after him.

Once before he had run.

His choice seemed to him, standing in the alley, that hot night in a New York summer, to kill or to flee, and he had known what he would do.

He looked down at Grawson. “Why did you want me to kill you?” he asked. But the mute form lay like a mound under its coat, inert on the bricks of the alley. Chance bent down and felt the man’s pulse. Grawson was strong.

Chance stood up again. “I am not a killer,” he told himself. And he said it to himself very simply, and was a little surprised, and found that he had no reason to disbelieve it. And for the first time in five years, Edward Chance, though he was ready to run, and would, stood as straight as a man can.