downward to the floor, and his red-robed companion fell across him in a heap of crumpled crimson draperies a split-second later as de Grandin's revolver bellowed a second time. The third man turned with a squeal of dismay and leaped half-way through the open door, then stumbled over nothing and slid forward on his face as a soft-nosed bullet cut his spinal cord in two six inches below his collar.
"See to Mademoiselle Mytinger, Friend Trowbridge!" de Grandin flung over his shoulder as, pistol in hand, he charged toward the doorway where his late antagonists lay. "Take her outside, I will join you anon!"
"Where are you going?” I objected. The thought of being separated in this uncanny house terrified me.
"Outside—cornes et peau du diable!—outside with you!" he shouted in answer. "Me, I go to find Mademoiselle Mueller and a certain souvenir."
7
The big front door was barred and double-locked. I swung to the right, traversed the room through which we had entered and hoisted the unlatched window a few inches higher. "This way, please," I told Miss Mytinger, pointing to the opening, "it's only a few feet to the ground."
She clambered over the sill and dropped to the soft turf below, and, after a futile look around for my friend, I lowered myself beside her.
"Quick, Friend Trowbridge," de Grandin's sharp whisper commanded even as my feet touched the grass. "This way—they come!"
His warning was none too early. Even as he grasped my arm and swung me into the shadow of a towering cedar, six men charged around the comer of the house, weapons in their hands and looks of fierce malignancy on their faces.
"Sa-ha!" de Grandin raised his revolver and fired, and the foremost of our assailants clapped his hand to his side, whirled half-way round, like a piroutting ballet-dancer, reeled suddenly to the left and slumped to the ground in an awkward heap. The man immediately behind stumbled over the fallen one's legs and fell forward with a guttural curse. De Grandin pressed the trigger again, but only a harmless click responded. The cylinder was empty, and five armed men faced us across a stretch of turf less than twenty feet wide.
Half turning, the Frenchman hurled his empty weapon with terrific force into the face of the nearest ruffian, who dropped with a scream, blood spurting from his nose and mouth, and grasped my elbow again. "This way, my friend!" he cried, seizing the Mytinger woman's arm with his free hand and rushing across the shaded lawn toward the narrow beach where the waters of Barnegat Bay lapped softly against the sand.
"Where's Fräulein Mueller?" I panted, striving to keep pace with
"Yonder!" he answered, and as he spoke a dark form detached itself from the shadow of a towering tree and joined us in flight.
Shouts and shots echoed among the evergreens behind us, but the short start we secured when the second man fell under the impact of de Grandin's hurled weapon enabled us to keep our lead, and, dodging among the shadows, we made steadily and swiftly toward the water.
"It's no use," Miss Mytinger informed us as the cool edges of the little wavelets moistened our feet and we swung toward the south, intent on rounding the edge of the walls surrounding the grounds on the landward side and doubling back to my car. "It's no use. The beach is full of quicksand. I heard them talking about it the night I came here. One
