“I’ll see you dead first!” came in a whisper from beneath the hideous mask.  Then, as Cleek’s fingers clamped tight again and the battle began anew, one long, thin arm shot out from amongst the writhing tentacles, one clutching hand gripped the leg of the table, and, with a wrench and a twist, brought it crashing to the ground with a sound that a deaf man might have heard.

And in an instant there was pandemonium.

A door flung open, and clashing heavily against the wall, sent an echo reeling along the corridor; then came a clatter of rushing feet, a voice cried out excitedly:  “Come on! come on!  He’s had to kill the old fool to get it!” and Cleek had just time to tear loose from the shape with which he was battling, and dodge out of the way when the man Merode lurched into the room, with half a dozen Apaches tumbling in at his heels.

“Serpice!” he cried, rushing forward, as he saw the gasping red shape upon the floor; “Serpice!  Mon Dieu! what is it?”

“The cracksman!” he gulped.  “Cleek!—­the cracksman who went against us!  Catch him! stop him!”

“The cracksman!” howled out Merode, twisting round in the darkness and reaching blindly for the haft of his dirk.  “Nom de Dieu!  Where?”

And almost before the last word was uttered a fist like a sledge-hammer shot out, caught him full in the face, and he went down with a whole smithy of sparks flashing and hissing before his eyes.

“There!” answered Cleek, as he bowled him over.  “Gentlemen of the sewers, my compliments.  You’ll make no short cut to ‘The Twisted Arm’ to-night!”

Then, like something shot from a catapult, he sprang to the door, whisked through it, banged it behind him, turned the key, and went racing down the corridor like a hare.

“It must be sheer luck now!” he panted, as he reached the angle and, kicking aside the rug, pulled up the trap.  “They’ll have that door down in a brace of shakes, and be after me like a pack of ravening wolves.  The race is to the swift this time, gentlemen, and you’ll have to take a long way round if you mean to head me off.”

Then he passed down into the darkness, closed the trap-door after him, shot into its socket the bolt he had screwed there, flashed up the light of his electric torch, and, without the password, turned toward the sewers, and ran, and ran, and ran!

CHAPTER IX

It lacked but a minute of the stroke of twelve, and the revels at “The Twisted Arm”—­wild at all times, but wilder to-night than ever—­were at their noisiest and most exciting pitch.  And why not?  It was not often that Margot could spend a whole night with her rapscallion crew, and she had been here since early evening—­was to remain here until the dawn broke grey over the house-tops and the murmurs of the workaday world awoke anew in the streets of the populous city.  It was not often that each man and each abandoned woman present knew to a certainty that he or she would go home through the mists of the grey morning with a fistful of gold that had been won without labor or the taking of any personal risk; and to-night the half of four hundred thousand francs was to be divided among them.