I reeled, and caught hold of a stanchion and saved myself. Far, far below, London--London in color was unrolling itself like a map--and immediately below my feet, already a considerable distance down, was the slithering black spider that I had sworn to kill. I could see him through the grid, and then I flung myself upon the corkscrew ladder, grasping the rails with my hands until the skin was burnt from them, disdaining the steps and spinning round and ever downwards like a great top. As I went my head projected at right angles to my body. As I buzzed down that sickening height I saw that Zorilla had stopped. I knew that he had come to one of the steel gates, at which he was fumbling uselessly. Then, as I came to the last step before the little gate platform I saw also, under the curve of the stair, a huddled figure, and I knew who _that_ was, who that had been.... I threw myself at Zorilla with my knee in the small of his back. Instantly I caught him round the throat with my fingers just on the big veins behind the ear which supply the brain with blood, and my fingers crushed the trachea until the whole supple throat seemed breaking under the molding of my grip. I felt that I had got him. That if I could hold out for a minute he would be dead, but I hadn't reckoned with the immense muscular force of the body. I clung like the leopard on the buffalo, but he began to sway this way and that. In front of us was the steel gate and the motionless figure of Pu-Yi. We were struggling upon the steel grid, not much larger than a tea table. A slight rail only three feet high defended us from the void--a little thigh-high rail between us and a drop of near two thousand feet. He lurched to the left, and I swung out into immensity, carried on his back. I was sure it was the end, that I should be flung off into space, when with one arm he gripped the gate, braced all his great strength and slowly dragged us back into equilibrium. It seemed that the whole tower trembled, vibrated in a horrible, metallic music. I pressed down my thumbs, I strained every sinew of my wrist and arm in the strangle hold, and I felt the life pulsing out of him in steady throbs. There was nothing else in the world now but myself and him and I ground my teeth and clutched harder. In his death agony he lurched to the other side of our tiny foothold space. This was where the circular stairway ended. He caught his foot, so I was told afterwards, in the last stanchion of the stair, fell over the rail with a low, sobbing groan, and then, weighted by me upon his shoulders, began to slip, slip, slip, downwards. And I with him.