The cruelty in his face eclipsed any lines of beauty which might have been there.  The girl’s heart froze within her as she looked once more into those eyes, which had always seemed to her like sword-points.

“I shall never go anywhere with you,” she answered steadily.

He seized her delicate wrist roughly, twisting it with the old wrench with which he had tormented her in their childhood days.  None of them saw the stranger who was quietly walking down the hall toward them.

“Will you go peaceably, or shall I have to gag and bind you?” said Richard.  “Choose quickly.  I’m in no mood to trifle with you any longer.”

Although he hurt her wrist cruelly, she threw herself back from him and with her other hand pressed still harder against the electric button.  The bell was ringing furiously down in the office, but the walls were thick and the halls lofty.  It could not be heard above.

“Catch that other hand, Mike,” commanded Richard, “and stuff this in her mouth, while I tie her hands behind her back.”

It was then that Mary screamed.  The man in the shadow stepped up behind and said in a low voice: 

“What does all this mean?”

The two men, startled, dropped the girl’s hands for the instant.  Then Richard, white with anger at this interference, answered insolently:  “It means that this girl’s an escaped lunatic, and we’re sent to take her back.  She’s dangerous, so you’d better keep out of the way.”

Then Mary Dunham’s voice, clear and penetrating, rang through the halls: 

“Tryon, Tryon!  Come quick!  Help!  Help!”

As if in answer to her call, the elevator shot up to the second floor, and Tryon Dunham stepped out in time to see the two men snatch Mary’s hands again and attempt to bind them behind her back.

In an instant he had seized Richard by the collar and landed him on the hall carpet, while a well directed blow sent the flabby Irishman sprawling at the feet of the detective, who promptly sat on him and pinioned his arms behind him.

“How dare you lay a finger upon this lady?” said Tryon Dunham, as he stepped to the side of his wife and put a strong arm about her, where she stood white and frightened in the doorway.

No one had noticed that the bell-boy had come to the head of the stairs and received a quiet order from the detective.

In sudden fear, the discomfited Richard arose and attempted to bluff the stranger who had so unwarrantly interfered just as his fingers were about to close over the golden treasure of his cousin’s fortune.

“Indeed, sir, you wholly misunderstand the situation,” he said to Dunham, with an air of injured innocence, “though perhaps you can scarcely be blamed.  This girl is an escaped lunatic.  We have been searching for her for days, and have just traced her.  It is our business to take her back at once.  Her friends are in great distress about her.  Moreover, she is dangerous and a menace to every guest in this house.  She has several times attempted murder——­”