But he got no answer. Enraged beyond measure, and still too much excited to be quite master of himself, he gave the inanimate body an impatient kick, and rising hastily, drank the remains of a bottle of wine without taking the trouble to pour it into the tankard, climbed out of the room, and up the ladder on to the ground floor. Here, however, he came to a sudden check. Somebody had begun to hammer violently at the back door and just as he was making for the front, resolved to try to burst it open, he heard the sound of somebody battering it from the outside. A moment’s thought showed him the only course open. Just as he heard the sound of the first board giving way under the crashing blows which were being hailed upon it, he sprang up the rickety stairs. CHAPTER XXIV. As soon as the altercation between Goodhare and Rees grew warm, Deborah, hearing the tramp of footsteps on the pavement outside the house, had crept to the cellar window, and, unheard by the two men in their excited discussion, had torn away one of the boards from the nail which fastened it, and succeeded in attracting the attention of a passer-by, who proved to be policeman. “Get in! break in! get in somehow!” she cried, “there are two men quarrelling here, and I’m afraid they will do each other harm.” By that time the voices in the lower cellar were growing louder, and she stumbled across the floor, called to the men, and beat against the door. But they were too much excited to heed her. She heard upstairs the sound of knocking; and climbing up the ladder as fast as she could in the darkness, she groped her way to the front door. There was, however, nothing that she could do to help. She could only wait, sick with terror, while they hammered in the nailed-up door from the outside. Before the first board gave way, she heard someone pass her in the darkness and spring up the staircase. From the agility with which he mounted she thought it must be Rees. “Rees, is it you? Are you safe? Hide, hide yourself,” she called to him in a hissing whisper. Amos Goodhare heard her voice and recognised it. It flashed through his mind instantly that it must have been to her that Sep had given the jewels. If he could only get possession of them, the day’s work which had rid him of a troublesome confederate and satisfied his appetite for revenge on two men he hated, would be indeed well done. He descended the stairs as softly and rapidly as he had mounted them. “Yes, Deborah, it is I, Rees,” he said, in a whisper which was only just audible in the noise of knocking, both at the front and the back of the house. “Where are you? Give me your hand. You have the jewels?” “Yes,” she answered, hesitatingly. “Where are you? where are you?” he repeated impatiently. “Quick; I must be off.”