This time Lanyard did not wait for him to come back for punishment, but closed in, catching him as he strove to rise, meeting each fresh effort with ruthless accuracy, battering him into insanity of despair, so that Ekstrom came back again and again without thought, animated only by frenzied brute instinct to find the throat of his tormenter, and ever and ever failing; till at length he crumpled and lay crushed and writhing, then subsided into insensibility, was quite still but for heaving lungs and the spasmodic clutchings of his broken and ensanguined fingers….
With a start, a broken sigh, a slight movement of the hand interpreting a crushing sense of the futility of human passion, Lanyard relaxed, drew back from standing over his antagonist, abstractedly found a handkerchief and dried his hands, of a sudden so inexpressibly shamed and degraded in his own sight that he dared not look the girl's way, but stood with hang-dog air, avoiding her regard.
Yet, could he have mustered up heart, he might have surprised in her eyes a light to lift him out from this slough of humiliation, to obliterate chagrin in a flood of wonder and—misgivings.
When, however, he did after a moment turn to her, that look was gone, replaced by one that reflected something of his own apprehension; for a heavy hand was hammering on the study door, and more than one voice on the other side was calling on "Karl" to open.
Either the servant whom Lanyard had met and victimised on his way downstairs had given the alarm, or else the noise of the encounter within the study had brought that pack of spies to the door, wildly demanding admission.
Steadied by one swift exchange of alarmed glances with the girl, Lanyard hastily reviewed the room, seeking some avenue of escape. None offered but the windows. He ran to them, tore back their draperies, and found them closed with shutters of steel and padlocked.
Simultaneously the din at the door redoubled.
With a worried shake Lanyard crossed to the chimney-piece, ducked his head, and stepped into its huge fireplace. One upward glance sufficed to dash his hopes: here was no way out, arduous though feasible; immediately above the fireplace the flue narrowed so that not even the most active man of normal stature might hope to negotiate its ascent.
He returned with only a gesture of disconcertion to answer the girl's look of appeal.
"Can we do nothing?" she asked, raising her voice a trifle to make it heard above the tumult in the corridor.