“Ah! coward, fight fair.”
As utterance was given to these words the speaker made a desperate spring to try and catch the pistol, his weight driving Garstang back, whose heels caught against a heavy fragment of the broken piece of statuary, and its owner went down with the back of his head striking violently against another piece of the marble.
The next moment, fainting and exhausted, his adversary was seated on the fallen man’s chest, wresting the pistol from his grasp.
“Thought he’d done me. Here, you’re a pretty sort of a one, you are! Why didn’t you call the police?”
“Oh, I dursen’t! I dursen’t!” sobbed Becky.
“You dursen’t, you dursen’t!” grumbled the speaker. “Hi! help, somebody! Hi, Kate! are you in there? What, Doctor! Then you’ve got here, after all. I did go to your house.”
For Pierce Leigh suddenly appeared at the library door, where he stood, supporting himself by the side.