She wheeled suddenly toward the door:  the ancient stairs were creaking beneath a measured tread.  She made an offer to add her weight to that of the table, but checked and fell back immediately, seeing the folly of sacrificing her strength, the wisdom of saving it to serve her when finally....

The creaking ceased, the wards of the lock grated, the knob turned, the door was thrust open—­the table offering little hindrance if any.  From the threshold Victor eyed the girl with a twitching grin.

“The time is at hand,” he announced with a parody of punctilio.  “We have beaten them off in the street, but they have found the tunnel from the cellar of the Red Moon, and are attacking from the river besides.  So, my dear, it ends for us....”

In silence, shoulders to the wall farthest from the door, Sofia watched him unwinking.  The lamp at her feet painted the tensely poised young body and bloodless face with quaint, stagey shadows.

Victor’s glance ranged the cheerless room.

“I think you understand me,” he said.

She might have been a waxwork dummy out of Madame Tussaud’s.

A white blaze of madness transfigured Victor’s countenance.  He took one step toward Sofia.

In movements so precisely coordinated that they seemed one and instantaneous, the girl stooped, caught up the lamp, and threw it with all her might.  Victor ducked his head.  The lamp sailed on, described a descending curve through the open doorway into the well of the staircase, struck, and exploded.  In the clutches of the maniac, Sofia was aware of the lurid glare, momentarily gaining strength, that filled the rectangle of the doorway.

In through this last, while iron hands tightened on her throat and consciousness grew dark with closing shadows, a man’s shape passed, then another....

The grip on her throat grew lax, the hands left it free.  She reeled, but somebody caught her up and bore her swiftly from the room, leaving two who fought together like beasts on the floor, locked in each other’s arms, rolling and squirming, rearing and flopping....

The scorch of flames stung her cheek, but she forgot that when their broken light made visible the features of Karslake above the arms wherein she lay cradled.

Turning aside from the staircase, Karslake bore her to the ladder leading to the skylight, whose broken glass crunched beneath his heels at every step.

In the open air he pulled up for a moment’s rest, but continued to hold Sofia in his arms.  The wind raved about them, buffeted them, tore their breath away, rain pelted them like birdshot; but they clung to each other and were unaware of reason for complaint.

Presently, however, Karslake remembered, and anxiously endeavoured to disengage from these tenacious arms.

“Let me go, dearest,” he muttered.  “I must go back—­I left your father to take care of Victor, and—­”