With no more warning than a cry, the signal for the onslaught, and the sudden scuffling noise of several pair of feet, he wheeled, found himself already closely pressed by a number of men, and struck out at random.  His stick landed on somebody’s head with a resounding thump followed by a yell of pain.  Then three men were grappling with him, two more seeking to aid them, and another lay in the roadway clutching a fractured skull and spitting oaths and groans.

His stick was seized and wrenched away, he was over-whelmed by numbers.  The knot of struggling figures toppled and went to the dust, Duchemin underneath, so weighed down that he could not for the moment move a hand toward his pistol.

Half-stifled by the reek of unwashed flesh, he heard broken phrases growled in voices hoarse with effort and excitement: 

“The knife!” ...  “Hold him!” ...  “Stand clear and let me—!” ...  “The knife!”

Struggling madly, he worked a leg free and kicked with all his might.  One of his assailants howled aloud and fell back to nurse a broken shin.  Two others scrambled out of the way, leaving one to pin him down with knees upon his chest, another to wield the knife.

Staring eyes caught a warning gleam on descending steel.  Duchemin squirmed frantically to one side, and felt cold metal kiss the skin over his ribs as the blade penetrated his clothing, close under the armpit.

Before the man with the knife could strike again, Duchemin, roused to a mightier effort, threw off the ruffian on his chest, got on his knees and, raining blows right and left as the others closed in again, somehow managed to scramble to his feet.

Fist-work told.  For an instant he stood quite free, the centre of a circle of uncertain assassins whose cowardice gave him time to whip out his pistol.  But before he could level it a man was on his back, his wrist was seized and the weapon twisted from his grasp.

A cry of triumph was echoed by exclamations of alarm as, disarmed, Duchemin was again left free, the thugs standing back to let the pistol do its work.  In that instant a broad sword of light swung round a nearby corner and smote the group:  the twin, glaring eyes of a motor car flooded with blue-white radiance that tableau of one man at bay in the middle of the road, in a ring of merciless enemies.

Duchemin’s cry for help was uttered only an instant before his pistol exploded in alien hands.  The headlights showed him distinctly the face of the man who fired, the same face of fat features black with soot that he had seen by moonlight at Montpellier-le-Vieux.

But the bullet went wild, and the automobile did not stop, but drove directly at the group and so swiftly that the flash of the shot was still vivid in Duchemin’s vision when the car swept between him and those others, scattering them like chickens.

Simultaneously the brakes were set, the dark bulk began to slide with locked wheels to a stop, and a voice cried:  “Quickly, monsieur, quickly!”—­the voice of Eve de Montalais.