It had been her intention to bolt and lock it, if possible. But he had been too quick for her. He thrust out a maddened hand to hold it back from the jamb, and she could hear his little howl of pain as the meeting timbers bit and locked on the fingers of the huge, fat hand. As she stood there, panting, with her full weight against the door, she could see the discoloring finger-tips, and the blood beginning to drip slowly from the bruised hand. Yet she knew she could not long withstand the shock of the weight he was flinging against her. So she looked about the darkening room quickly, desperately. Her first thought was of the windows. She could fling herself from one of them, and it would all be over with her in a minute. Then she caught sight of the nurse’s uniform of striped blue and white linen flung across the bed, and in a sudden inspirational flash she remembered the hypodermic. That, at least, would be painless—painless and sure. She slipped away from the door, and at the next lunge of his great body MacNutt fell sprawling into the room. By the time he was on his feet she had the little hollow-needled instrument in her hand. But he fell on her, like a terrier on a rat, caught her up, shook and crushed her in his great ape-like arms. “Oh, I’ll show you!” he panted and wheezed. “I’ll show you!” He dragged her writhing and twisting body through the door into the back room. She fought and struggled and resisted as best she could, catching at the door-posts and the furniture with her one free hand as she passed. She would have used her hypodermic and ended it all then and there, only his great grip pinned her right arm down to her side, and the needle lay useless between her fingers. The room was almost in darkness by this time, and a chair was knocked over in their struggles. But still MacNutt bore her, fighting and panting, toward the little table between the two windows, where the telephone transmitter stood. He pinned and held her down on the edge of the table with his knees and his bleeding right hand, while with his left hand he caught up the receiver of the telephone. “Central, give me the Chelsea, quick—the Chelsea, the Chelsea!” It was then and then only that the exhausted woman clearly understood what he meant to do. She started up, with a great cry of horror in her throat; but he muffled it with his shaking hand, and, biting out an oath, squeezed the very breath out of her body. “I want to speak to Durkin,” panted MacNutt into the transmitter, a moment later. “Durkin, James Durkin—a man with his arm in a sling. He just took rooms with you today. Yes, Durkin.” There was another long wait, through which Frances lay there, neither struggling nor moving, saving her strength for one last effort. “Yes, yes; Duggan; I guess that’s it!” MacNutt was saying over the wire to the switchboard operator at the hotel. “Yes, Duggan, with a lame arm!”