sprang in out of the darkness, and bore him back.
Before he had struck a blow they had pinned him against the wall.

Claude owed his escape to his position behind the door. They did not see
him as they sprang in, intent on the one they did see. He knew
resistance to be futile, and a bound carried him into the darkness of
the cork-screw staircase. Once there, he dared not move. Thence he saw
and heard what followed.

The man pinned against the wall, with the point of a knife flickering
before his eyes, begged piteously for his life.

"Then silence!" Basterga answered--for the foremost who had entered was
he. "A word and you die!"

"Better let me finish him at once!" Grio growled. The prisoner's face
was ashen, his eyes were starting from his head. "Dead men give no
alarms."

"Mercy! Mercy!" the man gasped.

"Ay, ay, let him live," Basterga said good-naturedly. "But he must be
gagged. Turn your face to the wall, my man!"

The poor wretch complied with gratitude. In a twinkling the Paduan's
huge fingers closed round his neck, and over his wind-pipe. "Now
strike," the big man hissed. "He will make no noise!"

With a sickening thud Grio's knife sank between the shoulders, a moment
the body writhed in Basterga's herculean grip, then it sank lifeless to
the floor. "Had you struck him, fool," Basterga muttered wrathfully,
wiping a little blood from his sleeve, "as you wanted to strike him, he
had squealed like a pig! Now 'tis the same, and no noise. Ha! Seize
him!"

He spoke too late. Claude had seen his opportunity, and as the
treacherous blow was struck had crept forth. At the moment the other saw
him he bounded over the threshold. Even as his feet touched the ground a
man who stood outside lunged at him with a pike but missed him--a
chance, for Claude had not seen the striker. The next moment the young
man had launched himself into the darkness and was running for his life
across the Corraterie in the direction of the Porte Neuve.

He knew that his foes were lying on every side of him, and the cry of
"Seize him! Seize him!" went with him, making every step a separate
peril. He could not see a yard, but he was young and fleet and active;
and the darkness covering him, the men were confused. Over more than one
black object he bounded like a deer. Once a man rising in front of him
brought him heavily to the ground, but by good fortune it was his foot
struck the man, and on the head, and the fellow lay still and let