Eve had never had to face such a mad thing, a thing that was so tempestuously and hysterically vindictive. Lizzie Straker might have been bred in the slums and taught to bite and kick and scratch like a frenzied animal.
“You beast! You sneak! We shan’t burn the place, shan’t we? Leave her to me, Joan, I say. I’ll teach her to play the traitor!”
Eve was a strong young woman, but she was attacked by a fanatic who was not too furious to forget the Japanese tricks she had learnt at a wrestling school.
“I’ve got you. I’ll pin you down, you beastly sneak!”
She tripped Eve and threw her, and squirming over her, pinioned Eve’s right arm in such a way that she had her at her mercy.
“You little brute, you’re breaking my arm!”
“I will break it, if you don’t lie still.”
Joan Gaunt had been watching the tussle, ready to intervene if her comrade were in danger of being worsted. Lawrence Kentucky and the chauffeur had their heads inside the window that they had just succeeded in forcing, when the porch door opened suddenly, and a man rushed out. He swung round, pivoting by one hand round one of the corner posts of the porch, and was on the two men at the window before they could run. To Joan Gaunt, who had turned as the door opened, it was like watching three shadows moving against the white wall of the cottage. The big attacking shadow flung out long arms, and the lesser shadows toppled and melted into the obscurity of mother earth.
“Lizzie, look out!”
Joan Gaunt had plenty of pluck, but she was sent staggering by a hand-off that would have grassed most full-backs in the kingdom. Canterton bent over the two women. One hand gripped Lizzie Straker’s back, crumpling up the clothes between the shoulder blades, the other went under her chin.