He clapped his hands.  The door opened, and four men stepped out.  Their type was not hard to determine.  They were of the scum of humanity—­ready for any desperate deed.

CHAPTER XXII

THE PART OF ABERCROMBIE, R.N.

“Come, girl, you must go!” commanded Millard, harshly.

“I will not,” she replied, coldly, “until my escort is ready to go with me.”

“He will not go with you,” replied Millard, significantly.  “And you must not remain.  What is to be done here is no thing for a dainty woman to see.”

“Mr. Benson,” appealed the girl, “will you enter the cab first?”

“If he does, the cab will not leave,” sneered Millard.

All this while the four men who had just come from the house were stealthily grouping themselves.  Jack watched them alertly.  He did not intend to be taken unawares, yet he hesitated to draw his pistol while Miss Huston was there.

“Go, girl!” Millard ordered again.

“I have told you, already, that I shall go only when Mr. Benson gives the word and accompanies me,” replied the girl, white but courageous.

“Then we won’t waste more time,” laughed the wretch, harshly.  “Since you will stay, then you must be a witness of what you have brought on my worst foe!  Close in, men—­get him!”

As the men sprang to obey, and Jack dodged nimbly back, Daisy Huston uttered a piercing scream.  The next thing she did was wholly natural.  Under the intense strain of her feelings the girl fainted.

“Take her!” nodded Millard, to the driver, who was plainly one of the desperate lot.  “Take her from here as fast as you can.”

The driver, ready for his work, snatched up the girl’s light form.

“Have a care what you do—­all of you!” cried Jack Benson, warningly, and now, in his hand, the revolver gleamed.

But one of the wretches, darting in at Jack’s right, from behind, aimed a blow with a cudgel at the weapon.  He struck it from the young lieutenant’s hand.

Down to the ground it fell, but Lieutenant Benson was as quick as thought, now.

He bent over, snatching up the weapon, then ducked away from a follow-up blow at his own head, and sprang back.

“You first, then, Millard!” cried the young acting naval officer.

Full of purpose, Lieutenant Jack pressed the trigger.  It stuck.  No report followed.  That blow from the cudgel had jammed the cylinder.

Having dropped the senseless form of Daisy Huston in the cab the driver sprang to the box, lashing the horses, just as Lieutenant Benson discovered the uselessness of his weapon as a firearm.

Then, indeed, young Benson knew that this must be a fight to the very death.  Yet he was a naval officer at heart, as much as by special appointment.  At a time like this he held life cheaply.

The first man to get within reach was laid flat by a blow with the butt of Jack’s revolver.