“She’s mine!” shouted Adolph, dropping on his knees by her side and bending over her.
“Let her alone! Let her alone!” shouted Marie, ceasing to struggle with Tansy in whose ape-like arms she was imprisoned. “Take me—both of you. Do what you like with me—only leave her untouched.”
But Adolph answered her with an insane, triumphant laugh.
“You belong to Tansy,” he said, and raising Alys from the floor, he carried her to one of the beds.
A great accession of strength seemed to flow through Marie’s body and limbs from her brain; her excitement and terror were inexhaustible sources of energy. With a superhuman effort, she released herself from Tansy’s grasp, and rushed like a flame across the room to the bed on which Alys, only half-conscious, was now stretched. Throwing herself upon Adolph from behind, she put her long fingers about his throat, and it appeared to her as though her will to destroy pumped wave after wave of power along her shoulders, down her arms, and into her fingers, and made them stronger than steel. The man, half turning, struck her several blows upon her face; but she felt nothing. Tansy, in attempting to pursue her, had stumbled over a chair, crushing his head against a corner of the table. He now lay on the floor, moaning.
It was while Marie’s fingers were still about Adolph’s throat that she became conscious of dull explosive sounds immediately outside one of the doors. At the same moment some one began to attempt to force an entrance through the other door. A voice shouted excitedly, warningly. But Marie still clung to her victim until all the strength left his limbs and he fell to the floor. A key rolled out of one of his pockets. She tried to pick it up, but a sudden faintness overcame her, and she sat on the edge of the bed unable to move, her head light and empty, her legs trembling with the utmost violence.
As one who dreams, she heard a great blow upon the door from beyond which the strange explosive noises had been coming, and with unbelieving eyes she saw the door fall inwards, torn from its hinges by a great beam that had fallen against it. An inexhaustible cloud of black smoke rushed into the room, almost suffocating her; with the smoke came a wave of heat and the noisy crackle of burning wood. The excited warning voice at the second door had ceased to shout.
All Marie’s senses were incredulous of her approaching doom. She gazed on her surroundings with the detachment of an onlooker who was not directly affected by those surroundings. She said to herself: “If Alys and I don’t escape soon—now—we shall be burned alive.” But still she did not move. She could not. She tried to lift her arm, but it remained inert on the bed. She attempted to speak to her sister, but no sound came from her lips....
The fire came roaring down the passage and entered the room. It was so hot that Marie felt her skin was being scorched. The horror of dying in flames seemed to her much less dreadful than the horror from which she had just escaped. Yet it would now be a comparatively easy matter to get away if only she could move. Her heart was beating violently, and her breath came and went most stormily. With a supreme effort she gathered all the forces of her mind together and concentrated them, willing herself to move; in response to this effort, her body rose from the bed and began to obey her wishes. Her hand picked up the key from the floor, her arms folded themselves about her sister and half-dragged, half-carried her to the second door. She fitted the key into the lock and turned it. In a second the door was open, and she and her sister were in the passage.
The door banged to after them, imprisoning the two half-conscious evil men.