"Oh, you are horrible--horrible! It is like death even to listen to you!" cried Karine. "If only there was a soul on earth to help me--but there's none--none!" His answer, if he had made one, was drowned in the crashing of glass. Better that she should be startled, even to the point of swooning, rather than endure for another second the torture that that fiend was inflicting upon her. I broke in the skylight with the heavy stick which I had brought up to the roof between my teeth. Then, with hands cut and bleeding, despite the protection of my gloves, I swung myself down and dropped on to the floor. There was a cry from Karine, and a sharp exclamation of dismayed astonishment from Wildred, for once outwitted. I had never been a match for him in diplomacy, but when it came to a physical encounter, I had every advantage over him, and I knew it. He had no time to pull out the knife or revolver, for which his hand flew to his pocket, for I was on him, taking him by the throat and shaking him as a terrier shakes a rat. I had not stopped even to look at Karine, and yet the vision of her pale face and hands clasped over her bosom had flashed, lightning-like, upon my consciousness. "Thank heaven! thank heaven!" I could hear her sob. I hoped that she did not look--that she had closed her eyes, or covered them with her hands, but Wildred did not give me time to make suggestions. He was more nimble, if he was less strong, than I. I could feel, through all his writhings, that he was trying to force me along with him towards a certain corner of the room, and, realising it, resolved to thwart him, whatever his object might be. I had come to the knowledge exactly one second too late, however. He had managed to place his foot on a bell concealed under one of the rugs on the floor, and I heard its summons go pealing shrilly out through the house. I remembered how I had looked for a bell in this room once before; it was scarcely to be wondered at, considering its position, that I had not found it. In another moment the servant-accomplice would come to the assistance of his master. Had it not been for Karine's presence I felt that I should not have found it difficult in my present mood to have held them both in check, but as it was I should greatly have preferred only one antagonist. The struggle in which I was engaged with Wildred had degenerated into a species of wrestling match. I had him down on one knee at last, and bending his arms behind him while he poured forth a volley of deadly oaths--his strange, light eyes flashing into mine--I attempted to tie his hands together with my silk handkerchief, wound into a slip-knot I had learned to make at sea. He was slippery as a serpent in my grasp, and it was taking all I knew to manage him, when a cry from Karine gave me the first warning that I was attacked from behind. The confidential man had stolen in as noiselessly as I had crept upon the roof and to the skylight.