There was the sound of chairs moving as if they had both risen.
Marion listened again. The noise above her head was growing louder. Not only were there sounds of trampling feet, but a great confusion of voices, all talking together.
Suddenly Marion heard a crash and a fearful shriek, then a score of slip-shod feet seemed scampering to shelter.
For an instant the young girl stood almost petrified with fear; then she turned and fled through the narrow hall-way, hardly knowing or caring in which direction.
CHAPTER XIV.
THE END OF THE TRAGEDY.
A sharp turn in the hallway caused Marion to shriek with terror. Two hideous Chinamen had sprung at her, and as they caught her in their arms, one of the beady-eyed wretches forced a saturated cloth over her nostrils.
Marion felt her breath coming in quick, short gasps. She struggled feebly, but her brain seemed reeling.
In a flash she was carried along the hall, down a flight of steep steps, and then, after the click of a key in a lock, she was taken into a room that was as dark as a dungeon. A confused jargon of voices came faintly to her ears and she could feel that the place was fairly swarming with the yellow devils.
The entire roomful of beings seemed to fall back as she was carried along, and at last she was placed on a sort of divan in the very darkest and most heavily-draped corner of what seemed to her to be a subterranean apartment. The cloth on her nostrils was pungent with narcotics, but she managed by a great effort of the will to somewhat resist its influence.