The insane creature flung himself at it. It repelled him. He shrieked and tore at it, but to no avail, and he finally turned away.
His eyes, now wilder than ever, swept the room. They rested on our bound figures. Swiftly, he passed over to where I lay. The rope puzzled him, and he was still for a moment.
Suddenly he grasped it and snapped it as though it had been thread. I was free, but I did not move. I waited for him to seize me, but his footsteps shuffled away. He was beside Chic now. I heard the rope which bound him snap.
In desperation, I rolled from the slab and rose trembling to my feet. The noise attracted the crazed being. He turned and faced me.
His features were distorted into a horrible grin. His sharp, cruel teeth gnashed as if in expectation of a bloody feast. He leaped at me, clearing the slab, on which I had lain, at one bound.
I was too weak to dodge, but I tried grimly to clinch with him, as I had seen groggy boxers do when they were sparring for time. I was in his arms. His eyes blazed not a foot from mine. Foam flecked his mouth. His weight pressed against me. It grew heavier and heavier.
Then my overwrought nerves gave way, and I became unconscious.
When I awoke I was outside in the cool night air. Chic was bathing my brow with muddy water from a roadside pool. The madman had collapsed at the same moment as I had. In a daze, Chic had laid him again on the slab and had dragged me from the building.
Poor Peter we forgot, until he was found the next morning, haggard, white-haired and unable to utter an intelligible word.