"Leave me alone!" she gasped, "or I will scream."
"Scream away," he laughed. "There's no one here to hear you."
Suddenly he made a quick lunge forward and seized her. She struggled and resisted with all the energy born of despair, pushing, twisting, scratching. But they were too unevenly matched. She was like an infant in the grasp of an Hercules. Slowly, she felt her strength leaving her. His iron grasp gradually closed on her, nearer and nearer he drew her into his embrace.
With a last, superhuman effort, she managed to wrench herself free, out of his grip, and breaking completely away, she fled into the next room. But he was after her in a minute and again seized her, but not before she screamed at the top of her voice:
"Help! Help! Kenneth! Wilbur! Help! Help!"
He tried to gag her mouth to stifle her cries, but it was too late. His quick ear caught the sound of approaching footsteps in the outside hall. Almost at the same instant there was a loud knocking at the door.
Keralio fell back, his face white and tense. Had his plans failed at the eleventh hour, could anyone have played him false? If the game was up, they should never take him alive. Leaving Helen, he drew a revolver, and, going quickly into the inner hall, he waited in grim silence for the visitors to force an entrance.
"Open the door, or we'll break it in!" shouted a stern voice outside. "There's no use resisting. The place is surrounded."
Still no answer. Keralio stood grimly in the shadow of the parlor doorway, revolver in hand, while Helen cowered in the inner room, in momentary expectation of a tragedy.
Crash! The front door fell in, shattered into a thousand splinters, and through the breach thus made rushed Wilbur Steell, Dick Reynolds, and half a score husky Central Office detectives, revolvers in hand.