Tresler could see nothing, but he knew that death was hovering over that room for some one. Suddenly he heard the table dragged or pushed across the floor, and Jake’s voice, harsh with the effort of struggle, reached him.
“You would, would you? Right; it’s you or me!”
At that moment the onlooker was about to rush forward, for what purpose he had but the vaguest idea. But even as he took the first step he felt himself seized forcibly by the arm from behind. And Diane’s voice whispered in his ear.
“Not you, Jack!” she said eagerly. “Leave it to me; I—I can save him—Jake.”
“Jake?”
“Yes.”
She was gone, and in an instant returned with the lighted kitchen lamp, which she held aloft as she rushed into the room.
Tresler was taken utterly by surprise. The girl’s movements were so sudden, so unexpected, and her words so strange.
There she stood in the middle of the room with the light held above her head like some statue. And all the signs of a deadly struggle were about her. Jake was sheltered behind the window table, and stood blinking in the sudden light, staring at her in blank astonishment. But the chief figure of interest was the blind man. He was groping about the opposite edge of the table, pitifully helpless, but snarling in impotent and thwarted fury. His right hand was still grasping the hilt of a vicious-looking, two-edged hunting-knife, whose point Tresler saw was dripping blood.