"I'm getting it, I think!" said Richard Hartley between his teeth. "I'm getting it. Turn, you beast! Turn!"
There was a sound of hurrying feet, and Ste. Marie spun about. He cried—
"Don't wait for me! Jump into the car and go! Don't wait anywhere. Come back after you've left Benham at home!" He began to run forward toward those running feet, and he did not know that the girl followed after him. A short distance away there was a little open space of moonlight, and in its midst, at full career, he met the Irishman O'Hara, a gaunt and grotesque figure in his sleeping suit, barefooted, with empty hands. Beyond him still, some one else ran stumbling, and sobbed and uttered mad cries.
Ste. Marie dropped his pistol to the ground and sprang upon the Irishman. He caught him about the body and arms, and the two swayed and staggered under the tremendous impact. At just that moment, from behind, came the crash of the opened door and triumphant shouts. Ste. Marie gave a little gasp of triumph too, and clung the harder to the man with whom he fought. He drove his head into the Irishman's shoulder, and set his muscles with a grip which was like iron. He knew that it could not endure long, for the Irishman was stronger than he; but the grip of a nervous man who is keyed up to a high tension is incredibly powerful for a little while. Trained strength is nothing beside it.
It seemed to Ste. Marie in this desperate moment—it cannot have been more than a minute or two at the most—that a strange and uncanny miracle befel him. It was as if he became two. Soul and body, spirit and straining flesh, seemed to him to separate, to stand apart each from the other. There was a thing of iron flesh and thews which had locked itself about an enemy, and clung there madly with but one purpose, one single thought—to grip and grip and never loosen until flesh should be torn from bones. But apart, the spirit looked on with a complete detachment. It looked beyond—he must have raised his head to glance over O'Hara's shoulder—saw a mad figure staggering forward in the moonlight, and knew the figure for Captain Stewart. It saw an upraised arm and was not afraid, for the work was almost done now. It listened and was glad, hearing the motor-car without the walls leap forward into the night, and its puffing grow fainter and fainter with distance. It knew that the thing of strained sinews received a crashing blow upon back-flung head, and that the iron muscles were slipping away from their grip, but it was still glad, for the work was done.
Only at the last, before red and whirling lights had obscured the view, before consciousness was dissolved in unconsciousness, came horror and agony, for the eyes saw Captain Stewart back away and raise the thing he had struck with, a large revolver, saw Coira O'Hara, a swift and flashing figure in the moonlight, throw herself upon him, before he could fire, heard together a woman's scream and the roar of the pistol's explosion, and so knew no more.
CHAPTER XXVIII
COIRA'S LITTLE HOUR
When Coira O'Hara came to herself from the moment's swoon into which she had fallen she rose to her knees and stared wildly about her. She seemed to be alone in the place, and her first thought was to wonder how long she had lain there. Captain Stewart had disappeared. She remembered her struggle with him to prevent him from firing at Ste. Marie, and she remembered her desperate agony when she realised that she could not hold him much longer. She remembered the accidental discharge of the revolver into the air, she remembered being thrown violently to the ground—and that was all.
Where was her father and where was Ste. Marie? The first question answered itself, for, as she turned her eyes towards the west, she saw O'Hara's tall ungainly figure disappearing in the direction of the house. She called his name twice, but it may be that the man did not hear for he went on without pausing and was lost to sight.