And following this, in a sudden fury, all round the room the pictures rattled in their frames; the flooring shook; a heavy desk went over in a smashing ruin; grunts followed it, the straining shock of big men in a death-grapple. But mostly it was a fight in silence and darkness, with the quick, hard breathing of men at the last desperate urge of their spent strength.
With her finger again upon the light-switch, again she hesitated, and in that flash of time she heard all at once a quick, sobbing breath—a groan—then silence.
Somewhere out there in that midnight blackness her husband might be lying wounded—dead—above him the beast whom she had known as Ronald the Debonair, turning his face now toward the girl who, shivering and defenseless, crouched forlorn upon the bed.
But even as this fresh terror out of the dark assailed her, there came a heavy crash—another—the barking rattle of an automatic, the quick flashes stabbing into the murk to right and left.
The roaring crashes beat upon her ears like a tocsin of doom, and then, in answer, three answering shots, deliberate, slow. With them there came the slumping fall of a heavy body, and the labored breathing of a man.
The duel was over.
For a moment the silence held. Dreading what the coming of the light might reveal, her finger, hovering upon the push-button, came away; then, with an agony of effort, made a darting thrust.
And as the light sprang to full flower she looked with white face and staring eyes, upon the tall figure in the doorway.
It was Robert Daventry!