He arose trembling. His limbs were stiff with long constraint and he steadied himself by grasping the back of the chair and leaning upon it. Breathing heavily and muttering unintelligible curses he turned slowly about and peered into Clara's eyes.
"Ha!" he gasped, "it's you, is it!"
His eyes, till then glowing with the rage of a baffled will, now flamed with ungovernable hate. Clara, all her resolution gone, her very life seeming to depart from her, yet stood ready to do what she could to help him, when with a passionate shriek he suddenly extended his thin quivering hands and seized her violently by the throat. Taken by surprise, her nervous energy exhausted by the long strain and its attendant disappointments, Clara made but slight resistance. Dexter clutched her with the desperate strength of a maniac and pushed her back against the wall.
What with the noise they made in moving across the floor, and Dexter's snarling curses, she did not hear the sound of rapidly approaching steps along the corridor; but just as the frenzied old man had pressed her against the wall, and when it seemed as if his fingers would lock inextricably upon her throat, Poubalov dashed into the room, laid hold of Dexter, wrenched him away from her, picked him up bodily, bore him screaming across the chamber and threw him heavily upon a bed. Then he placed his hand over the old man's mouth and looked around. Clara was now held hard and fast by another man, and although Poubalov's eyes glittered with a fierce light, he made no effort to interfere. Paul Palovna appeared in the doorway, his weary face glowing with joy as he looked upon his friend restored at last to the arms of her who loved him.
After a moment Strobel raised his head, and Clara, still embracing him, followed his eyes with her own, almost unbelieving that this meeting was reality. She turned her gaze with Ivan's to where Poubalov sat on the bed forcibly quieting the ravings of old Dexter.
"Miss Hilman," said the spy in his deepest tones, "you have been the hardest adversary I ever encountered. Last evening you gave me two alternatives of action. You told me to take you to your lover, or you would pursue me relentlessly. You have made it a desperately hard task for me, but to some extent at least I have succeeded in evading both alternatives, and have, instead, brought your lover to you."
Clara turned her wondering eyes to Ivan's for confirmation and explanation.
"It is true, dearest," he said. "We owe my deliverance to Poubalov, and without his efforts I shudder to think what would have happened to me."
"Is it possible," asked Clara in a subdued voice, "that you have really been trying to find Ivan all along?"