“The stairs!”

Blenheim’s gaze, full of suspicion, was upon us as we straightened, but he could not possibly have heard anything; I had barely heard myself.  I racked my brains.  The stairs!  But the man Schwartzmann was guarding them with his revolver.  I couldn’t imagine what she meant; and then suddenly I knew.

Throughout the entire scene, whenever I had glanced at her, I had noticed the steady way in which her look met mine and then turned aside.  It had seemed almost like a signal or a message she was trying to give me.  And which way had her eyes always gone?  Why, down the hall!

I looked in that direction and felt my heart leap up exultantly.  Perhaps twenty feet from us, just where the radius of the candle-light merged off into the darkness, I glimpsed what seemed the merest ghost of a circular stone staircase, carved and sculptured cunningly, like lacy foam.  Up into the dusk it wound, to the gallery, and to a door.  Behold our objective!  I wasted no precious time in pondering the whys and the wherefores.  At any rate, once inside with the bolts shot we could count on a breathing-space.

I cast a final glance at Blenheim where he lolled across the table, and at the shadowy menacing figure of the armed sentinel on the stairs.  The men at the hearth had piled their wood and were bending forward to light it.

“Be ready, please!” I said to the girl, aloud.

As I spoke I bent forward, seized the table by its legs, and raised it, and concentrated all the wrath, resentment and detestation that had boiled in me for half an hour into the force with which I dashed it forward against Blenheim’s face.  He grunted profoundly as it struck him.  Toppling over with a crash, he rolled upon the floor.  The candle, falling, extinguished itself promptly, and we were left standing in a hall as black as ink.

Simultaneously with the blow I had struck there came a spit of flame from the staircase, a sharp crack, and as I ducked hastily a bullet spurted past me, within three inches of my head.  Miss Falconer was beside me.  Together we retreated, while a second shot, which this time went wide, struck the wall beyond us and proved that Schwartzmann, though handicapped, was not giving up the fight.

So far things had gone better than I had dared to think was possible.  Now, however, they took a sudden and most unwelcome turn.  One of the men by the chimney-place must have wasted no time in leaping for me; for at this instant, quite without warning, he catapulted on me through the darkness with the force of a battering-ram.

The table, which I still held clutched with a view to emergencies, broke the force of his onslaught.  He reeled, stumbled, and collapsed on his knees.  However, he was lacking neither in Teutonic efficiency nor in resource.  Putting out a prompt hand, he seized my ankle and jerked my foot from under me; the table dropped from my grasp with a splintering uproar, and I fell.