"Plain-clothes man," was my glib enough answer, as I caught the pistol from his hand. He switched on the hall lights. He was half-way to the top of the stairs when a woman's scream, high pitched and horrible, echoed out of the room where I had the two confederates trapped. It was repeated, shrill and sharp. The face of the big blond man went as white as chalk. "_Who is that!_" he demanded, with staring eyes, facing the locked door of the second room. Then he backed off from the door. I flung a cry of warning at him, but it did not stop his charge. His great shoulder went against the paneled wood like a battering-ram. Under the weight of that huge body the entire frame-facing gave way; he went lunging and staggering from sight into the dimly-lit inner room. I waited there, with my gun at half-arm, feeling the room would suddenly erupt its two prisoners. Then, at a cry from the man, I stepped quickly in after him. I had fortified myself for the unexpected, but the strangeness of the scene took my breath away. For there I beheld the man called Hobbs engaged in the absurd and extraordinary and altogether brutal occupation of trying to beat in his confederate's head with the butt of his heavy revolver. He must have struck her more than once, even before the man in the hairy brown dressing-gown and the blue pajamas could leap for him and catch the uplifted arm as it was about to strike again. The woman, protected by her hat and veil and a great mass of thick hair, still showed no signs of collapse. But the moment she was free she sat back, white and panting, in the same high-armed _fauteuil_ which I myself had occupied a half-hour before. I made a leap for her companion's fallen revolver, before she could get it, though I noticed that she now seemed indifferent to both the loss of it and the outcome of the struggle which was taking place in the center of that pink and white abode of femininity. And as I kept one eye on the woman and one on the gun in my hand, I, too, caught fleeting glimpses of that strange struggle. It seemed more like a combat between wildcats than a fight between two human beings. It took place on the floor, for neither man was any longer on his feet, and it wavered from one side of the room to the other, leaving a swath of destruction where it went. A table went over, a fragile-limbed chair was crushed, the great cheval-glass was shattered, the writing-desk collapsed with a leg snapped off, a shower of toilet articles littered the rugs, a reading-lamp was overturned and went the way of the other things. But still the fight went on.