He stole to the limit of the protection afforded him by the door.  She saw his head turn a little sideways, and she saw his eyes fixed upon a certain spot in the wall.  Then he glanced back again toward the man writing, as though he measured the distance between them, as though he wished even to calculate the exact nature of the movement which it was necessary to make.  Then in the midst of her wondering came the elucidation of these things.  The man poised himself.  She could see him in the act of springing.  He made a dash, hit something with his hand, and the room was in darkness!  She heard him leap across the room toward the table, and she heard the low cry of Norris Vine as he sprang to his feet to meet this unknown assailant.  She knew very well in the darkness which way the struggle must go.  Norris Vine, slim, a hater of exercise, unmuscular, unprepared, could have no chance against an attack like this.

Virginia’s brain moved swiftly in those few moments.  She heard the quick breath of the two men as they swayed in one another’s arms, and she did not hesitate for a moment.  On tiptoe, and with all the grace and lightness which were hers, by right of her buoyant figure and buoyant youth, she crossed the room with swift, silent footsteps, and gathered into her hands the roll of papers upon the table.  As softly as she had come she went.  The deep sobbing breaths of the two men, the half-stifled cries with which Vine was seeking for outside help, effectually deadened the faint swish of her skirts and the tremor of her footsteps upon the carpeted floor.

She came and went like a dream, and when the man, in whose arms Norris Vine was after all but a child, finally dragged his victim across the floor by the collar and turned up the electric light, the table towards which he looked was bare.  He dropped Vine heavily upon the floor, and stood there rooted to the spot, gazing at the place where only a few moments before he had seen that roll of paper.  A hoarse imprecation broke from his lips, and Norris Vine, who was still conscious though badly winded, seeing what was amiss, sat up on the carpet and gazed too, bewildered, at the empty table.  The papers were gone!  There was no sign of them there.  There was no sign of any one else in the apartment.  There was nothing to indicate that any one had entered it or left it.  The man who had thought himself the victor stood there with his hands to his head, an unimaginative person, but suddenly dazed with a curious crowd of apprehensions.  Norris Vine staggered up to his feet, and groped his way toward the sideboard, where a decanter of brandy was standing.

“Good God!” he muttered to himself, as he poured some of the liquor into a glass and raised it to his lips.  “Are we all mad or bewitched or what?”

His assailant did not answer.  He raised the table-cloth and looked underneath, retreated into the bedroom, sought in vain for any signs of an intruder.  Then he came slowly back into the sitting-room, and the eyes of the two men met.  Norris Vine was leaning back against the sideboard, his clothes disarranged, his collar torn, his tie hanging down in strips.  In his shaking hand was the glass of brandy, half consumed.  There was a livid mark upon his face, and his eyes were wide open and staring.