The girl fumbled desperately with the clumsy key, and dropped upon her knees to see the better.  Once she said, in a whisper:  “I can’t turn it.  It won’t turn.”  And at that Richard Hartley pushed her out of the way and lent his greater strength to the task.

A sudden, loud cry came from the house, a hoarse, screeching cry in a voice which might have been either man’s or woman’s, but was as mad and as desperate and as horrible in that still night as the screech of a tortured animal—­or of a maniac.  It came again and again, and it was nearer.

“Oh, hurry, hurry!” said the girl.  “Can’t you be quick?  They’re coming.”

And as she spoke the little group about the wall heard the engine of the motor-car outside start up with a staccato roar and knew that the faithful chauffeur was ready for them.

“I’m getting it, I think,” said Richard Hartley, between his teeth.  “I’m getting it.  Turn, you beast!  Turn!”

There was a sound of hurrying feet, and Ste. Marie spun about.  He cried: 

“Don’t wait for me!  Jump into the car and go!  Don’t wait anywhere!  Come back after you’ve left Benham at home!”

He began to run forward toward those running feet, and he did not know that the girl followed after him.  A short distance away there was a little open space of moonlight, and in its midst, at full career, he met the Irishman O’Hara, a gaunt and grotesque figure in his sleeping-suit, barefooted, with empty hands.  Beyond him still, some one else ran, stumbling, and sobbed and uttered mad cries.

Ste. Marie dropped his pistol to the ground and sprang upon the Irishman.  He caught him about the body and arms, and the two swayed and staggered under the tremendous impact.  At just that moment, from behind, came the crash of the opened door and triumphant shouts.  Ste. Marie gave a little gasp of triumph, too, and clung the harder to the man with whom he fought.  He drove his head into the Irishman’s shoulder, and set his muscles with a grip which was like iron.  He knew that it could not endure long, for the Irishman was stronger than he, but the grip of a nervous man who is keyed up to a high tension is incredibly powerful for a little while.  Trained strength is nothing beside it.

It seemed to Ste. Marie in this desperate moment—­it cannot have been more than a minute or two at the most—­that a strange and uncanny miracle befell him.  It was as if he became two.  Soul and body, spirit and straining flesh, seemed to him to separate, to stand apart, each from the other.  There was a thing of iron flesh and thews which had locked itself about an enemy and clung there madly with but one purpose, one single thought—­to grip and grip, and never loosen until flesh should be torn from bones.  But apart the spirit looked on with a complete detachment.  It looked beyond—­he must have raised his head to glance over O’Hara’s shoulder—­saw a mad figure staggering forward