“Then what do you take my time for, damn your impudence.”
“Don’t swear.” Average Jones was deliberately provoking the older man to an outbreak. “Let’s—er—sit down and—er—be chatty.”
The drawl, actually an evidence of excitement, had all the effect of studied insolence. Judge Ackroyd’s big frame shook.
“I’m going to k-k-kick you out into the street, you young p-p-p-pup,” he stuttered in his rage.
His knotted fingers writhed out for a hold on the other’s collar. With a sinuous movement, the visitor swerved aside and struck the other man, flat-handed, across the face. There was an answering howl of demoniac fury. Then a strange thing happened. The assailant turned and fled, not to the ready egress of the front door, but down the dark stairway to the basement. The judge thundered after, in maddened, unthinking pursuit. Average Jones ran fleetly and easily. And his running was not for the purpose of flight alone, for as he sped through the basement rooms, he kept casting swift glances from side to side, and up and down the walls. The heavyweight pursuer could not get nearer than half a dozen paces.
From the kitchen Average Jones burst into the hallway, doubled back up the stairs and made a tour of the big drawing-rooms and living-rooms of the first floor. Here, too, his glance swept room after room, from floor to ceiling. The chase then led upward to the second floor, and by direct ascent to the third. Breathing heavily, judge Ackroyd lumbered after the more active man. In his dogged rage, he never thought to stop and block the hall-way; but trailed his quarry like a bloodhound through every room of the third floor, and upward to the fourth. Half-way up this stairway, Average Jones checked his speed and surveyed the hall above. As he started again he stumbled and sprawled. A more competent observer than the infuriated pursuer might have noticed that he fell cunningly. But judge Ackroyd gave a shout of savage triumph and increased his speed. He stretched his hand to grip the fugitive. It had almost touched him when he leaped, to his feet and resumed his flight.
“I’ll get you now!” panted the judge.
The fourth floor of the old house was almost bare. In a hall-embrasure hung a full-length mirror. All along the borders of this, Average Jones’ quick ranging vision had discerned small red-banded objects which moved and shifted. As the glass reflected his extended figure, it showed, almost at the same instant, the outstretched, bony hand of “Oily” Ackroyd. With a snarl, half rage, half satisfaction, the pursuer hurled himself forward—and fell, with a plunge that rattled the house’s old bones. For, as he reached, Jones, trained on many a foot-ball field, had whirled and dived at his knees. Before the fallen man could gather his shaken wits, he was pinned with the most disabling grip known in the science of combat, a strangle-hold with the assailant’s wrist clamped in below and behind the ear. Average Jones lifted his voice and the name that came to his lips was the name that had lurked subconsciously, in his heart, for days.
“Sylvia!” he cried. “The fourth floor! Come!”
There was a stir and a cry from two floors below. Sylvia Graham had broken from the grasp of her terrified aunt, and now came up the sharp ascent like a deer, her eyes blazing with resolve and courage.