seemed to be caught in a complex network of steel.  He turned one thrust, turned another, turned another.  Then suddenly he went forward at the lunge with his whole living weight.  Turnbull leaped back, but Evan lunged and lunged and lunged again like a devilish piston rod or battering ram.  And high above all the sound of the struggle there broke into the silent evening a bellowing human voice, nasal, raucous, at the highest pitch of pain.  “Help!  Help!  Police!  Murder!  Murder!” The gag was broken; and the tongue of terror was loose.

“Keep on!” gasped Turnbull.  “One may be killed before they come.”

The voice of the screaming shopkeeper was loud enough to drown not only the noise of the swords but all other noises around it, but even through its rending din there seemed to be some other stir or scurry.  And Evan, in the very act of thrusting at Turnbull, saw something in his eyes that made him drop his sword.  The atheist, with his grey eyes at their widest and wildest, was staring straight over his shoulder at the little archway of shop that opened on the street beyond.  And he saw the archway blocked and blackened with strange figures.

“We must bolt, MacIan,” he said abruptly.  “And there isn’t a damned second to lose either.  Do as I do.”

With a bound he was beside the little cluster of his clothes and boots that lay on the lawn; he snatched them up, without waiting to put any of them on; and tucking his sword under his other arm, went wildly at the wall at the bottom of the garden and swung himself over it.  Three seconds after he had alighted in his socks on the other side, MacIan alighted beside him, also in his socks and also carrying clothes and sword in a desperate bundle.

They were in a by-street, very lean and lonely itself, but so close to a crowded thoroughfare that they could see the vague masses of vehicles going by, and could even see an individual hansom cab passing the corner at the instant.  Turnbull put his fingers to his mouth like a gutter-snipe and whistled twice.  Even as he did so he could hear the loud voices of the neighbours and the police coming down the garden.

The hansom swung sharply and came tearing down the little lane at his call.  When the cabman saw his fares, however, two wild-haired men in their shirts and socks with naked swords under their arms, he not unnaturally brought his readiness to a rigid stop and stared suspiciously.

“You talk to him a minute,” whispered Turnbull, and stepped back into the shadow of the wall.

“We want you,” said MacIan to the cabman, with a superb Scotch drawl of indifference and assurance, “to drive us to St. Pancras Station—­verra quick.”

“Very sorry, sir,” said the cabman, “but I’d like to know it was all right.  Might I arst where you come from, sir?”

A second after he spoke MacIan heard a heavy voice on the other side of the wall, saying:  “I suppose I’d better get over and look for them.  Give me a back.”