Before I could recover myself my enemy had rolled on top of me, and I felt his fingers at my throat as he clamored in German for a light.  He was a heavy man; his bulk was paralyzing; but I stiffened every muscle.  With a mighty heave I turned half over, rose on my elbow, and delivered a blow at what, I fondly hoped, might prove the point of his chin.

Dark as it was, I had made no miscalculation.  He dropped on me once again, but this time as an inert mass.  Burrowing out from under him, I sprang to my feet aglow with triumph—­and found myself in the clutch of the second gentleman from the chimney-place, who apparently had come hotfoot to his comrade’s aid.

I was fairly caught.  His arms went round me like steel girders, pinioning mine to my sides before I knew what he was about.  In sheer desperation I summoned all the strength I possessed and a little more.  Ah!  I had wrenched my right arm loose; now we should see!  I raised it and managed, despite the close quarters at which we were contending, to plant a series of crashing blows on my adversary’s face.

The fellow, I must say, bore up pluckily beneath the punishment.  He hung on.  There would be a light in a moment, he was doubtless thinking, and when once that came to pass, it would be all over with me.  But at my fifth blow he wavered groggily, and at my sixth, endurance failed him.  He groaned softly.  Then his grasp relaxed, and he collapsed quietly on the floor.

Throughout the swift march of these events we had heard nothing of Herr von Blenheim, a fact from which I deduced with thankfulness that he was temporarily stunned.  Unluckily, he now recovered.  As I stood victorious, but breathless, my cap lost in the scuffle and my coat torn, I heard him stirring, and an instant later he pulled himself to his feet and flashed on an electric torch.

By its weird beam I saw that Miss Falconer was close beside me.  Good heavens!  Why, I though in anguish, wasn’t she already upstairs?  But I knew only too well; she wouldn’t desert her champion.  It was probably too late now.  Blenheim, much congested as to countenance, seemed on the point of springing; his battered aids were struggling up in menacing, if unsteady, fashion; and Mr. Schwartzmann, at length provided with the light he wanted, was aiming at me with ominous deliberation from his coign of vantage above.

However, we were at the circular staircase.  Again I caught up the table and held it before us as a shield while we climbed upward, side by side.  In the distance my friend Schwartzmann was hopefully potting at us.  A bullet, with a sharp ping, embedded itself in the thick wood in harmless fashion; another struck the shaft beside me, splintering its stone.  We were at the last turn—­but our pursuers were climbing also.  I bent forward and let them have the table, hurling it with all possible force.

As it catapulted down upon them it knocked Blenheim off his balance, and he in his unforeseen descent swept the others from their feet.  A swearing, groaning mass, a conglomeration of helplessly waving arms and legs, they rolled downward.  Victory!  I was about to join Miss Falconer in the doorway when there came a final flash from the opposite staircase, and I felt a stinging sensation across my forehead and a spurt of blood into my eyes.