[Illustration: _With a low-pitched exclamation of fury, the man closed with him and fought like some mad thing_] Instantly all was pandemonium! For the man--for man it was--sprang round quickly, showing the lower half of a white face to Cleek's watching eyes, and then with a low-pitched exclamation of fury closed with him and fought like some mad thing, spitting out furiously and clawing and scratching with his free hand to gain hold of the other. Cleek realized the danger even as he met it, and knew what it ultimately meant. But the thing had to be done. And in the doing he had wound one foot round a stave of iron which rose up out of the parapet to form the base of Rhea's bronze throne, and so steadied himself for the nonce. But it was a difficult task indeed to free himself from this clutching, scratching, biting Thing, and it took all his powers of resistance to combat him successfully. "Stop it--damn you!--stop it!" he gave out furiously, in an angry whisper which at least reached Mr. Narkom's ears, and sent the night-owl's hoot creeping eerily out over the silence of that black night to tell Cleek that he would come to the rescue if necessary. And Cleek hooted back. He couldn't do this thing alone--it was too much for him. The space upon which they wrestled was a mere foot and a half in breadth, and at any moment one or both of them might pitch down into the darkness to certain death. He peered into the man's fury-ridden face, trying to distinguish the features of it, but the upper half was covered with a black mask through which the eyes gleamed like slits of fire, and the strength of him seemed superhuman, to say the least of it. It was merely a matter of moments now--something would have to be done--when, of a sudden, the man leapt away from him, reached down an arm again, and--lithe as a cat--swung himself down upon the perilously narrow ledge of the great bronze bell. Here was Cleek's chance. In an instant his hand had shot out toward the man's leg and caught it in a vice, while with the other he steadied himself by a firm hold of the wrought-iron stave that had saved him a moment or two before.