"Wait just outside," he directed. He turned to Laurie. "Out you go!" he ordered brusquely.
Laurie hesitated, glancing at Doris, but he could not meet her eye. At the window, with her back to the room, she stared out at the storm. Even in that moment her attitude stunned him. Also, he felt an unconquerable aversion to anything in the nature of a struggle before her. Perhaps, once outside the room, he could take on those ruffians, together or in turn.
Without another word, he crossed the threshold into the hall. Before him hurried the two Italians. Behind him crowded Shaw and the secretary. He walked forward perhaps six strides. Then, as the side railing of the stairway rose beside him, he saw his opportunity. He struck out right and left with all his strength, flooring one of the Italians and sending the second helpless against the wall. In the next instant he had leaped over the slender rail of the stairway, landed half-way down the stairs, and made a jump for the front door.
As he had expected, the door was locked. Shaw, if he had entered that way, had not been too hurried to attend to this little detail. Laurie had just time to brace his back against it when the four men were upon him.
The ten minutes that followed were among the most interesting of young Devon's life. He had always liked a good fight, and this episode in the great dim hall brought out all that was bloodthirsty and primitive in him. For in the room above was Doris, and these men, whoever they were, stood in the way of her freedom and happiness.
If he could have taken them on one by one he could have snapped their necks in turn, and he would have done so without compunction. As it was, with four leaping at him simultaneously, he called on all his reserve strength, his skill in boxing, and the strategy of his foot-ball days.
His first blow sent the blond secretary to the floor, where he lay motionless. After that it was hard to distinguish where blows fell. What Devon wanted and was striving to reach was the throat of Shaw, but the slippery thing eluded him.
He fought on with hands and feet, even drawing, against these odds, on the savate he had learned in Paris. Blood flowed from his nose, his ear and his lip. Shaw's face was bleeding, too, and soon one of the Italians had joined the meek young secretary in his slumbers on the floor. Then Laurie felt his head agonizingly twisted backward, heard the creak of a rusty bolt, and, in the next instant, was hurled headlong through the suddenly opened door, to the snow-covered veranda.
As he pulled himself up, crouching for a return spring, Shaw, disheveled and breathless on the threshold, jerkily addressed him.
"Try it again if you like, you young devil," he panted, "but remember one thing: the next time you won't get off so easily."