Page:Amazing Stories Volume 16 Number 06.djvu/77

Rh every muscle of his body tight with impatience. She pressed her hands close to her temples and bowed her head.

When she looked up at him her face was weary with the struggle within herself. She made a useless, helpless gesture with her hand and her slight shoulders slumped as if a heavy physical weight was resting there.

She said, "I can't make—"

The sentence was never finished. A hoarse shout from without drowned out her words. The single door of the room banged open and the arrogant bulk of Baron Von Multke filled the doorway.

His square, stolid face was flushed with triumph, and his cold, blue eyes flashed haughtily as they flicked from the girl to Ward.

A mirthless grin touched his lips and his big shoulders shook with silent laughter.

"So," he sneered, "the troublesome bird has tired of his cage already, eh?"

ARD had wheeled at the first sound of the baron's entrance, and now he crouched motionless, his thoughts boiling hotly.

One advantage was his and it was not apparent to anyone in the room, even to himself. When he had broke from the crude room he had determined to act—directly, savagely, without reckoning the odds or the cost.

That determination was still with him.

The baron was relaxed and lazily confident, savoring to the full his moment of triumph. He dominated the scene enjoying hugely the feeling of power and ruthlessness that the young Earth officer's helplessness afforded him. Helpless—there was no doubt of that. A dozen men were within sound of his voice, the Earth officer was trapped like a rat in a trap.

These thoughts were an elixir to his brain as he swaggered into the room bestowing a smirking glance at Ann's pale, terrified face.

He had no way of knowing that Ward's wary eyes had been watching for just such a chance. In that brief second while the baron was smirking at Ann, his attention was diverted from Ward.

And in that brief second Ward acted—directly, savagely, oblivious to cost or odds.

His lean, whip-cord muscles coiled like powerful springs and he launched himself at the baron. He dove low, twisting in mid-air to bring his hard, flat hip into the baron's knees.

The baron turned, but not soon enough. Ward's hard driving body swept under him with savage force, dumping him to the floor in a sprawling breathless tangle.

Ward rolled to his feet with the momentum of his drive and lunged for the open door. Behind him he heard the baron bellowing like an outraged bull as he clambered awkwardly to his feet.

Then Ward was outside in the darkness.

He heard shouted voices and heard footsteps drumming toward the building he had just left. Without a second's pause he set out at a hard driving run in the opposite direction.

The narrow street was almost pitch-dark and twice in twenty feet Ward sprawled to the hard ground as his foot turned in a rut or hole.

A desperate glance over his shoulder revealed a milling crowd of men at the door of the building and in the center of the crowd he could make out the bar-