"Jacques!"
He whirled. Saw the door at the far end of the room buckle and give way.
With one sweep of his arms, he sent the baron's body toppling through the window. Falling down ... down ... down, to death on the stone-slab walk three stories below.
Even as he did it, Mark was leaping toward Elaine. He caught her in his arms and lunged for the room's second door. He made it bare inches ahead of the guardsmen's swords.
This door was lighter. Already it rattled under the blows of the baron's men.
"Let me die, Jacques!" Elaine whispered. "I know I am going. You need not try to save me."
"Don't say it!" Mark's voice was a jagged knife of command. "You can't die now. Don't say it!"
He carried her, then, to where the picture Gustav Jerbette had painted stood. A strange picture, for that day and age, for it portrayed Mark Carter and his fiancee, Elaine Duchard, standing side by side in front of a building clearly identifiable as Professor Duchard's laboratory. And the pair were dressed, not in the garb of eighteenth century France, but in that of twentieth century America.
"Shut your eyes, Elaine!"