There was a gruff oath.

We stayed to hear no more.  Garrick had already picked up the heavy suitcase and was running down the steps two at a time, with myself hard after him.

Without waiting to ring the bell at 99, he dashed the suitcase through the plate glass of the front door, reached in and turned the lock.  We hurried into the back room.

Violet was lying across a divan and bending over her was Warrington.

“She—­she’s unconscious,” he gasped, weak with the exertion of his forcible entrance into the place and carrying from the floor to the divan the lovely burden which he had found in the room.  “They--they fled—­two of them—­the maid, Lucille—­and a man I could not see.”

Down the street we heard a car dashing away to the sound of its changing gears.

“She’s—­not—­dying—­is she, Garrick?” he panted bending closer over her.

Garrick bent over, too, felt the fluttering pulse, looked into her dilated eyes.

I saw him drop quickly on his knees beside the unconscious girl.  He tore open the heavy suitcase and a moment later he had taken from it a sort of cap, at the end of a rubber tube, and had fastened it carefully over her beautiful, but now pale, face.

“Pump!” Garrick muttered to me, quickly showing me what to do.

I did, furiously.

“Where did you come from?” he asked of Warrington.  “I thought I saw someone across the street who looked like you as we came along, but you didn’t recognise us and in a moment you were gone.  Keep on with that pulmotor, Tom.  Thank heaven I came prepared with it!”

Eagerly I continued to supply oxygen to the girl on the divan before us.

Garrick had stooped down and picked up both the handkerchief with its crushed bits of the kelene tube and near it a shattered glass hypodermic.

“Oh, I got thinking about things, up there at Mead’s,” blurted out Warrington, “and I couldn’t stand it.  I should have gone crazy.  While the doctor was out I managed to slip away and take a train to the city.  I knew this address from the letter.  I determined to stay around all night, if necessary.  She got in before I could get to her, but I rang the bell and managed to get my foot in the door a minute later.  I heard the struggle.  Where were you?  I heard your voice in here but you came through the front door.”

Garrick did not take time to explain.  He was too busy over Violet Winslow.

A feeble moan and a flutter of the eyelids told that she was coming out from the effects of the anaesthetic and the drug.

“Mortimer—­Mortimer!” she moaned, half conscious.  “Don’t let them take me.  Oh where is—­”

Warrington leaned over, as Garrick removed the cap of the pulmotor, and gently raised her head on his arm.

“It’s all right—­Violet,” he whispered, his face close to hers as his warm breath fanned her now flushed and fevered cheek.