By her side, torn, dishevelled, and gasping, knelt Marcella Boyce.  Two or three other women were standing by in helpless terror and curiosity.  Marcella was bending over the bleeding victim before her.  Her own left arm hung as though disabled by her side; but with the right hand she was doing her best to staunch some of the bleeding from the head.  Her bag stood open beside her, and one of the chattering women was handing her what she asked for.  The sight stamped itself in lines of horror on Raeburn’s heart.

In such an exaltation of nerve she could be surprised at nothing.  When she saw Raeburn enter the room, she did not even start.

“I think,” she said, as he stooped down to her—­speaking with pauses, as though to get her breath—­“he has—­killed her.  But there—­is a chance.  Are the—­police there—­and a stretcher?”

Two constables entered as she spoke, and the first of them instantly sent his companion back for a stretcher.  Then, noticing Marcella’s nursing dress and cloak, he came up to her respectfully.

“Did you see it, miss?”

“I—­I tried to separate them,” she replied, still speaking with the same difficulty, while she silently motioned to Aldous, who was on the other side of the unconscious and apparently dying woman, to help her with the bandage she was applying.  “But he was—­such a great—­powerful brute.”

Aldous, hating the clumsiness of his man’s fingers, knelt down and tried to help her.  Her trembling hand touched, mingled with his.

“I was downstairs,” she went on, while the constable took out his note-book, “attending a child—­that’s ill—­when I heard the screams.  They were on the landing; he had turned her out of the room—­then rushed after her—­I think—­to throw her downstairs—­I stopped that.  Then he took up something—­oh! there it is!” She shuddered, pointing to a broken piece of a chair which lay on the floor.  “He was quite mad with drink—­I couldn’t—­do much.”

Her voice slipped into a weak, piteous note.

“Isn’t your arm hurt?” said Aldous, pointing to it.

“It’s not broken—­it’s wrenched; I can’t use it.  There—­that’s all we can do—­till she gets—­to hospital.”

Then she stood up, pale and staggering, and asked the policeman if he could put on a bandage.  The man had got his ambulance certificate, and was proud to say that he could.  She took a roll out of her bag, and quietly pointed to her arm.  He did his best, not without skill, and the deep line of pain furrowing the centre of the brow relaxed a little.  Then she sank down on the floor again beside her patient, gazing at the woman’s marred face—­indescribably patient in its deep unconsciousness—­at the gnarled and bloodstained hands, with their wedding-ring; at the thin locks of torn grey hair—­with tears that ran unheeded down her cheeks, in a passion of anguished pity, which touched a chord of memory in Raeburn’s mind.  He had seen her look so once before—­beside Minta Hurd, on the day of Hurd’s capture.