Number Twelve opened his mismated eyes in astonishment.
“Then you have already killed Maxon?” he asked.
“No. He was wounded by a savage enemy. I have been helping to make him well again. He has wronged me as much as he has you. If I do not wish to kill him, why should you? He did not mean to wrong us. He thought that he was doing right. He is in trouble now and we should stay and protect him.”
“He lies,” suddenly shouted another of the horde. “He is not one of us. Kill him! Kill him! Kill Maxon, too, and then we shall be as other men, for it is these men who keep us as we are.”
The fellow started forward toward Number Thirteen as he spoke, and moved by the impulse of imitation the others came on with him.
“I have spoken fairly to you,” said Number Thirteen in a low voice. “If you cannot understand fairness here is something you can understand.”
Raising the bull whip above his head the young giant leaped among the advancing brutes and lay about him with mighty strokes that put to shame the comparatively feeble blows with which von Horn had been wont to deal out punishment to the poor, damned creatures of the court of mystery.
For a moment they stood valiantly before his attack, but after two had grappled with him and been hurled headlong to the floor they gave up and rushed incontinently out into the maelstrom of the screaming tempest.
In the doorway behind him Sing Lee had been standing waiting the outcome of the encounter and ready to lend a hand were it required. As the two men turned back into the professor’s room they saw that the wounded man’s eyes were open and upon them. At sight of Number Thirteen a questioning look came into his eyes.
“What has happened?” he asked feebly of Sing. “Where is my daughter? Where is Dr. von Horn? What is this creature doing out of his pen?”