With a score of men crowding the kitchen, Thorn looped back in his tracks like a hunted creature, and sought the cellar door. Four men he upset, one after another, aided by the fact that his twisting body could be only approximately placed by the papers and the wound. Then Kori's hand swept through the air above the waving packet, to clamp over Thorn's wrist. With an effort--that bulged the muscles of that blacksmith's fore-arm of his till it seemed they must burst through the film, Thorn whirled Kori clear off his feet and sent him stumbling into the charge of three guards. But in the meantime the cellar was barred to him by a double line of men. Fighting for his life--and, far more important, the existence of his country--Thorn lashed out with his invisible right fist while his left clutched the plans. A score of men arrayed in a death struggle against one! But the odds were not twenty to one. Not quite. The score could mark Thorn's general whereabouts--but they could not see his flying right fist! That was an invisible weapon that did incredible damage. But if they could not see the fist to guard against it, they could see the results of the fist's impacts. Here a nose suddenly crumpled and an instant later gushed red. There a head was snapped back and up, while its owner slowly sagged to the floor. And all the while the still dripping wound and the packet of documents kept with devilish ingenuity between the body of some swordless guard and the impatient blades of the Arvanian nobles. Almost, it seemed to Thorn, he would win free. Almost, it appeared to the Arvanians, the unseen one would reach the big window near the door--which the path of his wreckage indicated was his goal. But one of the wildly swinging fists of a guard caught Thorn at last. It landed on the glass cup over his right eye, cutting a perfect circle in the skin around the eyesocket, and tearing the film over the glass! * * * * * Now there were three things about the lithe, invisible body that the Arvanians could see: the crumpled papers, a slowly drying patch of blood that moved shoulder high in the air, and a blood-rimmed, ice-gray eye that glared defiance at them from apparently untenanted atmosphere. Then came what seemed must be the end. Soyo appeared in the pantry doorway with a machine gun. "Everybody to the end of the kitchen by the window!" he cried. "To the devil with silence--we'll spray this room with lead, and let the sound of shots bring what consequences it may!" The men scattered. The machine gun muzzle swept toward the place where the eye, the papers, and the blood spot were to be seen.