ealized all this and sprang to Smith's assistance. There
was a sound of racing footsteps and the men who had been watching
outside came running into the porch. A third was with them; and the
five of us (for Weymouth's brother had not yet grasped the fact that a
man and not a spirit shrieked and howled in our midst) clung to the
infuriated madman, yet barely held our own with him.

"The syringe, Petrie!" gasped Smith. "Quick! You must manage to make
an injection!"

I extricated myself and raced into the cottage for my bag. A
hypodermic syringe ready charged I had brought with me at Smith's
request. Even in that thrilling moment I could find time to admire the
wonderful foresight of my friend, who had divined what would
befall--isolated the strange, pitiful truth from the chaotic
circumstances which saw us at Maple Cottage that night.

Let me not enlarge upon the end of the awful struggle. At one time I
despaired (we all despaired) of quieting the poor, demented creature.
But at last it was done; and the gaunt, blood-stained savage whom we
had known as Detective-Inspector Weymouth lay passive upon the couch in
his own sitting-room. A great wonder possessed my mind for the genius
of the uncanny being who with the scratch of a needle had made a brave
and kindly man into this unclean, brutish thing.

Nayland Smith, gaunt and wild-eyed, and trembling yet with his
tremendous exertions, turned to the man whom I knew to be the messenger
from Scotland Yard.

"Well?" he rapped.

"He is arrested, sir," the detective reported. "They have kept him at
his chambers as you ordered."

"Has she slept through it?" said Smith to me. (I had just returned
from a visit to the room above.) I nodded.

"Is HE safe for an hour or two?"--indicating the figure on the couch.
"For eight or ten," I replied grimly.

"Come, then. Our night's labors are not nearly complete."

CHAPTER XXX

LATER was forthcoming evidence to show that poor Weymouth had lived a
wild life, in hiding among the thick bushes of the tract of land which
lay between the village and the suburb on the neighboring hill.
Literally, he had returned to primitive savagery and some of his food
had been that of the lower animals, though he had not scrupled to
steal, as we learned when his lair was discovered.

He had hidden himself cunningly; but witnesses appeared who had seen
him, in the dusk, and fled from him. They never learned that the
object of their f