"I'll check the coast is clear. Just remember, you've only got five minutes to get out. Don't dawdle. Light it and go--Wait! What's that?" Pretending that he had heard someone coming, he whipped around and half drew a blade from his boot.

Kevin fell for the ruse. He cupped his hand to his ear. But all he heard was the distant rumble of the drills in the main bore and the whine of the blowers pulling foul air out of the pioneer tunnel and drawing in fresh. "What? What did you hear?"

"Run down there! See who's coming."

Kevin ran, shadows leaping as his light bounced on the rough walls.

The old man ripped the gunpowder fuse from the detonator and threw it into the darkness. He replaced it with an identical-looking string of hemp yarn soaked in melted trinitrotoluene, which was used to detonate multiple charges simultaneously because it burned so fast.

He was quick and dexterous. By the time he heard Kevin returning from his fool's errand, the treachery was done. But when he looked up, he was stunned to see Kevin holding both hands in the air. Behind him was the railroad dick, the cop who had watched him enter the tunnel. Suspicion had transformed his whiskey-sodden face into a mask of cold vigilance. He was pointing a revolver in a rock-steady grip.

"Elevate!" he commanded. "Hands up!"

Swift eyes took in the fuse and detonator and understood at once. He tucked his weapon close to his body, clearly a fighting man who knew how to use it.

The old man moved very slowly. But instead of obeying the order to raise his hands, he reached down to his boot and drew his long knife.

The cinder dick smiled. His voice had a musical lilt, and he spoke his words with the self-taught reader's love of the English language.

"Beware, old man. Even though you have brought, in error, a knife to a gunfight, I will be obliged to shoot you dead if it does not fall from your hand in a heartbeat."

The old man flicked his wrist. His knife telescoped open, tripling its length into a rapier-thin sword. Already lunging with fluid grace, he buried the blade in the cop's throat. The cop reached one hand to his throat and tried to aim his gun. The old man thrust deeper, twisting his blade, severing the man's spinal cord as he drove the sword completely through his neck and out the back. The revolver clattered on the tunnel floor. And as the old man withdrew his sword, the cop unfolded onto the stone beside his fallen gun.

Kevin made a gurgling noise in his own throat. His eyes were round with shock and fear, darting from the dead man to the sword that had appeared from nowhere and then back to the dead man. "How--what?"

He touched the spring release and the sword retracted into the blade, which he returned to his boot. "Same principle as the theatrical prop," he explained. "Slightly modified. Got your matches?"