Behind him now all the house was in an uproar. A hubbub of angry voices came from the upper floors and heavy footsteps thundered above him. Stealthily he peered out from behind the curtain and came face to face with Mandelstamm. The Jew was standing there listening, his head half inclined to the stairway. He was not two feet away, a magnificent mark, and, to simplify matters, he turned his head precisely at the right moment to bring the point of his jaw in contact with Desmond’s fist as, without hesitation, the young man drove at him. Mandelstamm collapsed instantly in a sitting position, then flopped over, grunted once, and lay still. Clubfoot’s stentorian voice went booming through the house, shouting orders. Save for Blund and Mandelstamm, the whole of the party seemed to have been collected on one of the upper floors. Now they all came trooping noisily down. The little hall with the locked door behind him was, Desmond realized, a cul-de-sac, a veritable death-trap. Three doors faced him across the hall. With one stride the young man was across the Jew’s body and, choosing the middle door at random, opened it swiftly and slipped through. He found himself in the room where, less than an hour before, he had confronted Clubfoot and his confederates. Seated at the oval table in the centre was the girl they had called Mademoiselle Xenia. Loud exclamations from the hall, showing that the party had discovered their casualties, warned Desmond of the urgent danger of his position. There was a key on the inside of the door. He turned it and slipped it in his pocket. “I heard the fat Englishman cry out”—the girl was speaking in her dull, listless voice—“I wondered if you were free. But there is no escape from _him_. Why, oh, why, did you come here?” A hand pounded noisily on the door. “Xenia, Xenia!” came in Tarock’s gruff voice. Desmond turned swiftly to the girl. “Will you help me?” he said. With wonder in her mournful black eyes she nodded. “Is there no way out of this room except by the door?” he asked. She shook her head. “The windows?” “They are shuttered and barred with steel!” “Then help me to barricade the door!” Already some one outside was hurling his weight against it. But the oaken panels were solid and held well. With great difficulty Desmond and the girl dragged a tall black cupboard across the room and stood it before the door, subsequently reënforcing the barricade with a steel filing-cabinet, the heavy mahogany table laid on its side, and an intricate zareba of chairs. Something cold was laid in Desmond’s hand. It was a Browning pistol. “It has seven shots,” said Xenia. “I used to think I might use it one day, but . . .” She shrugged her shoulders and relapsed into her habitual mournful silence. “By George!” exclaimed Desmond. “This puts new heart into the defence. The name of Tarock, of Cracow, is written on one of these bullets, did you know that, Mademoiselle Xenia?”