Then suddenly I came upon Marjorie Garth in a little open space between two moss-grown boulders. Though I could hardly believe my own eyes there was no mistake about it; for her face was turned towards me. And she was struggling in the arms of Custrin. Her face was very pale and in her grey eyes was a look of despair which I shall not easily forget. She was wearing no hat and her gold-brown hair tossed to and fro as with one hand thrust in her opponent's face, she fought desperately to keep him off.
It all happened in a flash. The next thing I knew, I felt the bite of my knuckles in Custrin's damp neck as, my hand firmly clutching his collar, I tore him backwards. All my resentment against this false, sleek, smooth-spoken creature welled up within me and I exulted to feel him stagger and wilt, then crumple up in a grasp which I willed to be as violent and brutal as mind and muscle could make it.
Caught unawares he reeled backwards inert, for a fraction of a second a dead weight in my hold. But then he reacted. I felt his wiry frame stiffen as he struggled to elude me. But I held fast and swinging him round, gave him my fist in his face.
It was the force of my own blow that sent him from my hands,—staggering against a rock which brought him up standing. A single word he spoke.
"Herr!" he cried and the word burst in a kind of sob from his throat. In the crisis his native tongue came to his lips and in that moment I knew Dr. Custrin for a German.
There was murder in his quick, black eyes. His hand clawed for his hip-pocket but I was at him at once, driving for his face again. This time he dodged the blow and I felt my wrist rasp on the rough boulder behind him. For all his pretty drawing-room ways he was game enough, and with outstretched hands made at my throat.
But I drew back swiftly and as he came at me, let fly with my left to the point of the chin. He stopped dead, his eyes goggling, his head sagging on his shoulders. Then he crumpled up in a mass at my feet.
I turned to Marjorie. She stood, where I had found her, against the other boulder, dabbing at her lips with her handkerchief, her breath coming and going in quick gasps.
"The beast!" she said and her voice broke. "The beast!"
Then, plaintively like a little child, she cried:—