"Since," he reflected, "there's only one thing I desire—and it's the one thing forbidden—I fail sometimes to quite puzzle it out!"
He had finished his preparations for the night and was about to turn out the light, when, with his hand on the electric button, he paused, for he distinctly heard from downstairs what sounded like a call—a cry.
Taking his revolver from the top drawer, he went into the hall, to feel a draft of icy air blow up the staircase, to see over the balusters the open door of the dining-room and light within it, and to hear more clearly the sounds that had come to him through closed doors declare themselves to be scuffling—struggling—the half-cry of a muffled voice—a fall, then Bulstrode started.
"I'm coming," he declared, and ran down the stairs like a boy.
On the dining-room floor, close to the window wide open to the icy night, lay a man's form, and over him bent another man cruelly, with all the animus of a bird of prey.
The under man was Ruggles, Bulstrode's butler, his eyes starting from their sockets, his mouth open, his color livid; he couldn't have called out, for the other man had seized his necktie, twisted it tight as a tourniquet around the man's gullet, and so kneeling with one knee on his chest, Waring held the big man under.
"I say," panted the young man, "can you lend a hand, sir? I've got him, but I'm not strong enough to keep him."
Bulstrode thought his servant's eyes rolled appealingly at him. He cocked his revolver, holding it quietly, and asked coolly:
"What's the matter with him that he needs to be kept?"
"Would you sit on his chest, Mr. Bulstrode?"