men."

"With this I have sent him running from your door," cried Fridji. "It is
locked this side, and you will bleed to die before they break it."

Not rushing, but creeping, Dutch Fridji approached.

Amaryllis raised her eyes towards the window and the strip of sky it
framed, in silent supplication. And already, half through the window,
she saw her answer.

And Fridji saw her victim's face flush with hope, and turned to see its
cause.

Through the opening which Amaryllis had left between sill and sash, his
hands on the floor, his chin almost touching it, while his legs from
knee to feet were still outside the window, she saw Dick Bellamy.

Fridji, with blood in her mind, knife in her hand, and the proof of
Amaryllis' face that this was an enemy, sprang to deal with the
defenceless intruder.

Amaryllis had seen the lank black hair, no longer sleek, and had
received one gleam from the uplifted blue eyes; and now knew terror such
as she had not felt even for herself.

Nothing, it seemed, could come between the knife and Dick Bellamy--Dick
who had come to her. And then she saw his left arm dart forward--an arm
that seemed, on the floor, to shoot out to twice its natural length--and
its fingers gripped Fridji's left ankle, jerking it towards him.

The woman fell backwards, and Amaryllis caught her from behind.

"Stop her mouth," said Dick from the floor.

And the girl, her long hands almost meeting round Fridji's slender neck,
squeezed with all her strength, forcing the head and shoulders to the
ground.

Fridji gaped for breath.

"Stuff her mouth--blanket," said Dick, with his feet almost clear of the
window-sill, yet keeping his hold on the ankle.

Amaryllis forced the corner of the coverlet between Fridji's teeth and
held it there, keeping up the pressure of the other hand on the throat.

"That's what they did to me," she thought.

Dick stood beside her.

"Change with me," he whispered, and slid his left hand round the front
of Dutch Fridji's neck. Amaryllis stood up.

By the hold of his left, Dick raised the woman almost to her feet and,
measuring his distance, struck her with his right fist on the left side
of the neck directly below the ear--a short, sharp blow, the sound of
which affected the watching girl with a pang of physical sickness.

It might have been the noise made by a butcher flinging a slab of raw
steak upon his block.

Dick let the woman's body gently back to the floor, and Amaryl