danger.

He turned, intending to escape down the other stairway. He was too
late.

Ben caught him midway between the bed and the door that opened to the
stairway, and his big hands went around the banker's neck, cutting
short his scream of terror and the incoherent mutterings which followed
it.

Peggy Nyland had been suffering mental torture for ages, it seemed to
her. Weird and grotesque thoughts had followed one another in rapid
succession through her brain. The thing had grown so vivid--the
horrible imaginings had seemed so real, that many times she had been on
the verge of screaming. Each time she tried to scream, however, she
found that her jaws were tightly set, her teeth clenched, and she could
get no sound through them.

Lately, though--it seemed that it had been for hours--she had felt a
gradual lessening of the tension. Within the last few hours she had
heard voices near her; had divined that persons were near her. But she
had not been certain. That is, until within a few minutes.

Then it seemed to her that she heard some giant body threshing around
near her; she heard a stifled scream and incoherent mutterings. The
thing was so close, the thumping and threshing so real, that she
started and sat up in bed, staring wildly around.

She saw on the floor near her two men. One had his hands buried in the
other's throat, and the face of the latter was black and horribly
bloated.

This scene, Peggy felt, was real, and again she tried to scream.

The effort was successful, though the sound was not loud. One of the
men turned, and she knew him.

"Ben," she said in an awed, scared voice, "what in God's name are you
doing?"

"Killin' a snake!" he returned sullenly.

"Dale?" she inquired wildly. Her hands were clasped, the fingers
working, twisting and untwisting.

"Maison," he told her, his face dark with passion.

"Because of me! O, Ben! Maison has done nothing to me. It was Dale,
Ben--Dale came to our place and attacked me. I felt him carrying
me--taking me somewhere. This--this place----"

"Is Maison's rooms," Ben told her. In his eyes was a new passion; he
knelt beside the bed and stroked the girl's hair.

"Dale, you said--Dale. Dale hurt you? How?"

She told him, and he got up, a cold smile on his face.

"You feel better now, eh? You can be alone for a few minutes? I'll
send someone to you."

He paid no attention to her objections, to her plea that she was afraid
to