The approaching footsteps come nearer, and Alan, seizing Leslie by the arm, drags her toward the door by which the others have escaped.
“Go!” he says fiercely, “the police are coming; go, for the sake of the name you bear, for your husband’s sake, go! go! go!”
As he forces her resisting form across the threshold she turns upon him a face of piteous appeal.
“Alan! And you—”
His lip curls scornfully.
“I am not a woman,” he says impatiently; “go, or—”
Some one is entering at the outer doorway. He pushes her fiercely out into the rear room, from which he knows there is a means of exit, closes the door, and turns swiftly to face the intruders.
Silly Charlie has crossed the threshold just in time to see Leslie as she disappears through the opposite door. He has one swift glimpse of the fair vanishing face, and then turns suddenly, and with a sound indicative of extreme terror, brings himself into violent contact with Van Vernet who is close behind.
Before he has so much as obtained a glimpse of the scene, Vernet finds his legs flying from under him, and in another moment is rolling upon the floor, closely locked in the embrace of Silly Charlie, who, in his terror, seems to mistake him for an enemy.
When he has finally released himself from the grasp of the seeming idiot, and is able to look about him, Van Vernet sees only a dead man upon the floor, and a living one standing at bay, with his back against a closed door, a deal table before him serving as barricade, and, in his hand, a bar of rusty iron. There is no trace of the Francoises, and nothing to indicate the recent presence of Leslie Warburton.