"Hi-lee! Hi-lo!
Der vinds dey blow
Joost like die wacht am Rhine!
Und vot iss mine belongs to me,
Und vot iss yours iss mine!"

There came a knock at his door; he rose and opened it, supposing it to
be the porter; and was seized in the powerful grasp of two men and
jerked into the dark corridor.

One of them had closed his mouth with a gloved hand, crushing him
with an iron grip around the neck; the other caught his legs and
lifted him bodily; and, as they slung him between them, his startled
eyes caught sight of Ilse Dumont entering his drawing-room.

It was a silent, fierce struggle through the corridor to the front
platform of the vestibule train; it took both men to hold, overpower,
and completely master him; but they tried to do this and, at the same
time, lift the trap that discloses the car steps. And could not manage
it.

The instant Neeland realised what they were trying to do, he divined
their shocking intention in regard to himself, and the struggle became
terrible there in the swaying vestibule. Twice he nearly got at the
automatic pistol in his breast pocket, but could not quite grasp it.
They slammed him and thrashed him around between them, apparently
determined to open the trap, fling him from the train, and let him
take his chances with the wheels.

Then, of a sudden, came a change in the fortunes of war; they were
trying to drag him over the chain sagging between the forward mail-car
and the Pullman, when one of them caught his foot on it and stumbled
backward, releasing Neeland's right arm. In the same instant he drove
his fist into the face of his other assailant so hard that the man's
head jerked backward as though his neck were broken, and he fell flat
on his back.

Already the train was slowing down for the single stop between Albany
and New York--Hudson. Neeland got out his pistol and pointed it
shakily at the man who had fallen backward over the chain.

"Jump!" he panted. "Jump quick!"

The man needed no other warning; he opened the trap, scrambled and
wriggled down the mail-car steps, and was off the train like a snake
from a sack.

The other man, bloody and ghastly white, crept under the chain after
his companion. He was a well-built, good-looking man of forty, with
blue eyes and a golden beard all over blood. He seemed sick from the
terrific blow dealt him; but as the train had almost sto