He walked over to the couch and picked up his hat and coat. The secretary unostentatiously insinuated himself into the center of the room. Shaw alone remained immovable and unmoved. Even as Laurie turned with the garments in his hands, Shaw smiled his wide smile and encircled the room with a sweeping gesture of one arm. "Go, then, by all means, my young friend," he cried jovially, "but _how_?" Laurie's eyes followed the gesture. He had already observed the absence of windows. Now, for the first time, with a sudden intake of breath, he discovered a second lack. Seemingly, there was no exit from the room. Of course there was a door somewhere, but it was cleverly concealed, perhaps behind some revolving piece of furniture; or possibly it was opened by a hidden spring. Wherever it was, it could be found. In the meantime, his manoeuver had given him what he wanted--more space in which to fight two men. With a sudden movement Shaw picked up the silver-framed photograph, and ostentatiously blew the dust off it. This done, he held it out and looked at it admiringly. "You will stay here, but you will not be alone," he promised, with his wide, sharp-toothed grin. "This will keep you company. See how the charming lady smiles at the prospect--" He dropped the picture, which fell with a crash on the tiled flooring around the fireplace. The glass broke and splintered. Shaw gasped and gurgled under the strangling hold of the powerful fingers on his throat. Lamp and table were overturned in the struggle that carried the three men half a dozen times across the room and back. Laurie, fighting two opponents with desperate fury, could still see their forms and Shaw's bulging eyes in the firelight. Then he himself gasped and choked. Something wet and sweet was pressed against his face. He heard an excited whisper: "Hold on! Be careful there. Not too much of that!" A moment more and he had slipped over the edge of the world and was dropping through black space. CHAPTER XI A BIT OF BRIGHT RIBBON When Laurie opened his eyes blackness was still around him, a blackness without a point of light. But as his mind slowly cleared, the picture he saw in his last conscious moment flashed across his mental vision--the dim, firelit room, the struggling, straining figures of Shaw and the blond secretary. He heard again the hissed caution, "Not too much of that!" He sat up, dizzily. There _had_ been "too much of that." He felt faint and mildly nauseated. His hands, groping in the darkness, came in contact with a brick floor; or was it the tiling around the fireplace? He did not know. He decided to sit quite still for a moment, until he could pull himself together.