“You lie, you—­” He shifted his grip to her hair and started to drag her along the hall.

Jan stepped softly out, reached his arms round Goles’s shoulders, drew them tight against his own chest; and then, holding him safe with his elbows, he ran his fingers down until they felt the knuckles of the other’s hands.  And then he squeezed.  With thumb and forefinger of each hand he squeezed.  Jan could pick up a keg of copper rivets with one thumb and forefinger and toss it across the deck of a ship.  And now he squeezed.  Goles hung on.  Jan squeezed.  The knuckles began to crack.  “G-g-g—­” snarled the other and loosed his grip.

Jan relaxed the grip of his thumb and forefinger, swung the man round, walked to the head of the stairs, raised his left knee, pressed it against the small of Goles’s back, shifted his right hand to behind the man’s shoulders and suddenly let knee and arm shoot out together.  In one magnificent curve, and without touching a step on the way, Goles fetched up on the lower hall floor.

He stood up after a while and made as if to come back upstairs.  As he did so Jan made as if to go down.

Goles glared up at him.

“So it is you!”

“Yes, it’s me,” said Jan.  “Come!”

“Come?  No!  But you wait there, will you?  Just wait there and see what happens to you!  Wait!” And even as he called that last “Wait!” he was running for the back stairs.

Jan turned to her.  She was sitting on the floor with her back against the stair-rail.  Her knees were drawn up, and with elbows on knees she was supporting her head in her hands.

“Where is he gone to?” asked Jan.

“I don’t know—­to get his revolver probably.”

Jan bent over to see her face.  A great listlessness was all he could read there.

“Would he shoot?  Did he ever shoot anybody?”

“Yes—­two.  But the police never found out.  You’d better get out while there’s time.”

“And won’t he shoot you?”

She raised her head to look at him.  “No,” she answered presently—­“not just now.  He will some day—­that’s sure.  He promised me that more than once, and he means it; but I don’t think he will to-night.”

“Then, if ever he meant it, he will to-night,” said Jan.  “I don’t want to get shot; and I’m going.  You better come too.”  She shook her head.  “Yes,” He put an arm under her shoulder.  “Come.”

“No, no.  I mustn’t.”

“But you must.”  Jan put his other arm under her and lifted her to her feet; but yet she lay heavy, half-resisting.  “Come,” said Jan.  “I’ll take you out of here—­to my mother.”

“Your mother?” she repeated, and straightened up; but almost instantly fell back.  “But we can’t now!” she whispered.

“Why?” whispered Jan.

“It’s too late.  Hear him?” Jan heard steps on the landing below; and as he listened and looked the light in the hall below went out.  “You can’t get out the front door in time now,” she said hopelessly.