For the first time the girl became animated. A little warmth stole into her olive cheeks and her dark eyes brightened. “Kill him!” she said passionately. “Kill him for me! Deliver me from this man and I will kiss your feet! Kill him slowly, make him suffer as he has made me and my family suffer! . . .” “We’ll do what we can!” said Desmond cheerfully. The cold caress of the automatic had raised his spirits a hundred per cent. A desperate assault was being delivered on the door. It groaned and creaked and the barricade before it rocked and swayed. “This won’t do!” said Desmond, furrowing his forehead. With an anxious glance at the door, he crossed to the window. The steel bars were deep-sunk in the face of the shutter and padlocked in the centre. “A shot would burst that lock!” remarked the young man, fingering his gun. “Useless!” replied the girl. “The window is barred outside. There is no escape!” And then the light went out. “Ah!” said Desmond. “Clubfoot would think of that.” The room was pitch-dark. “Xenia,” he called softly, “where are you?” “Here,” said her soft voice in his ear. And her hand was gently laid on his arm. “You must try to be brave,” he encouraged her. “I think they’re going to rush us! The door will go in a minute!” Already a broad chink of light showed that, though the lock yet held, the upper part of the door was yielding to the savage battering. “I am not frightened,” Xenia made answer—and her voice was quite steady—“I shall be glad to die! You will make it easy for me. It is long since I knew a man without fear!” She placed her hand, small and warm and soft, in his. “My mother, my little sister, my two brothers, they are all in the prisons of the Tcheka,” she said. “I am hostage for them. Tarock was the commissary who denounced them. He brought me here as his secretary. For almost a year now I have been in his power. So you see I am happy to die . . .” Then the door gave. There was a crash as the topmost pile of chairs hurtled to the ground. A broad beam of light clove the darkness about the barricade. “Okewood”—the challenge came in Clubfoot’s deep voice—“the game’s up! Come out quietly before you’re hurt!” Desmond’s hand squeezed hard the little hand that lay in his palm. “Courage!” he whispered. “And listen! Do you hear anything outside?” Above the hubbub in the hall outside there fell upon their ears the distant throb of a car. Then he raised his voice. “Grundt,” he cried out distinctly, “Grundt, you can go to hell!” A bearded face with dangerous, bloodshot eyes appeared in the chink between door and jamb. Desmond shot so swiftly that the roar of the report, Tarock’s sharp exclamation, and the thud of the body sounded almost as one. “Herr Gott!” bellowed Clubfoot. There was a loud explosion and a bullet “whooshed” above the heads of the man and girl. The door was forced wider and the barricade was split in twain.