"You're a brute!" she cried in a hoarse, gurgling voice. "Release me! I--I can't breathe!" "No, by Heaven, you shall die!" he declared, his strong, muscular hands trembling with uncurbed passion. "Your infernal tongue shall utter no more foul slanders, for to-night, now--this moment--I'll silence you!" She uttered a low, agonised cry, then, fainting, panting, breathless, sank upon her knees, unable any longer to resist the frightful pressure upon her throat. At that instant, however, Smayle, hearing an unusual noise, dashed in, and, taking in the situation at a glance, seized his master firmly. "Good heavens, sir! what's the matter?" he cried. "Why, you're killing the lady!" "Get out?" cried the Captain with an oath, shaking himself free, and still holding the fainting woman at his feet. "Get out quickly! Leave the house, and--and don't come back!" "But you're killing her!" he cried. "See, there's blood in her mouth!" "Obey me this instant!" he roared. "Leave me!" "No," Smayle answered, "I won't!" And, springing upon his master, he managed, after a desperate struggle, to drag his hands free of the kneeling woman's throat and fling him back with a smothered oath. "I won't see a woman murdered in that cowardly way," he declared vehemently, "even if you are my master?" "What the devil do my affairs concern you, Smayle?" Tristram demanded fiercely, glaring at his servant, and glancing at Gemma, now fallen back prostrate on the floor, her hat crushed beneath her, her fair hair escaping from its pins. "They concern me as far as this, sir--that you shall leave this room at once. If the lady is dead, then you've committed murder, and I am witness of it!" "You'd denounce me, would you?" the Captain shrieked with rage, his hands still clenched in a fierce paroxysm of anger. Then, next instant he sprang at him. But Smayle was a slim, athletic fellow, and, like most of the genus Tommy Atkins, knew how to use his fists when occasion required. He jumped aside, nimbly evaded the blow his master aimed at him, and cleverly tripped up his adversary, so that he fell headlong to the ground, bringing down from its pedestal a pretty Neapolitan statuette, which was smashed to atoms. Tristram quickly rose with an imprecation, but Smayle, again grappling with him, succeeded at length, after an encounter long and fierce, in flinging him out of the room, and locking the door.