CHAPTER XXXIV
A ROYAL ACTOR
Lechmere darted along in the direction of the secondary staircase from whence the noise of the falling body had come. It was somewhat dark there, for the gas jet at that point had been turned down and there were no electrics there. At the foot of the stairs could be seen the outline of somebody who had become entangled with a maze of salmon line and who was held up like a great blundering bee in a spider's web. Lechmere could hear him muttering and swearing to himself as he struggled to be free.
But there was no time to waste. Doubtless Mazaroff would be out of his room in a little time, and it was just possible that he might come that way. Lechmere slid down the bannisters as a schoolboy might have done; he had an open pocket knife in his teeth. Noiselessly he came down upon the struggling man and gripped him by the shoulders.
["Don't you make a sound," he hissed.] "Not one word unless you want this knife plunged into your body. Be still, and no harm shall come to you."
The other man said nothing. He allowed himself to be cut free from the salmon line and dragged behind a kind of housemaid's closet at the foot of the stairs. At the same moment Mazaroff came along. The two men there could see the dark outline of his anxious face as he lighted a vesta to aid him in seeing what was going on.