Page:Frank Packard - The White Moll.djvu/306

 open door into the garret at her side. The two forms in there, on their feet again, were spinning around and around with the strange, lurching gyrations of automatons—and then she saw the Adventurer whip a terrific blow to Danglar's face—and Danglar fall and lie still—and the Adventurer come leaping toward her.

But faces were showing now above the level of the floor, and there was suddenly an increased uproar from further back in the rear until it seemed that pandemonium itself were loosed.

"It's the police! The police behind us!" she heard Shluker's voice shriek out.

She jumped to her feet. Two of the gang had reached the landing and were smashing at the Adventurer. There seemed to be a swirling mob in riot there below. The Adventurer was fighting like a madman. It was hand to hand now.

"Quick! Quick!" she cried to the Adventurer. "Jump back through the door."

"Oh, no, you don't!" It was Skeeny—she could see the man's brutal face now. "Oh, no, you don't, you she-devil!" he shouted, and, over-reaching the Adventurer's guard, struck at her furiously with his clubbed revolver.

It struck her a glancing blow on the head, and she reeled and staggered, but recovered herself. And now it seemed as though it were another battle that she fought—and one more desperate; a battle to fight back a horrible giddiness from overpowering her, and with which her brain was swimming, to fight it back for just a second, the fraction of a second that was needed until—until

"Jump!" she cried again, and staggered over the threshold, and, as the Adventurer leaped backward