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Rh out of the way, so forcibly that the man was sent staggering wildly half a dozen paces.

"Don't move, assassin! … Pardon, mademoiselle: one moment," Lanyard muttered, with his one free hand undoing the gag.

He made slow work of that, fumbling while watching Ekstrom with unremitting intentness, hoping against hope that his enemy might make one false move, one only, by some infatuate endeavour to turn the tables excuse his killing.

But Ekstrom would not. Recovery of his equilibrium had been coincident with the shock administered to his hardihood and sense of security by Lanyard's entrance. He stood now in a pose of insouciant grace, hands idly clasped before him, disdain glimmering in languid-lidded eyes, contempt in the set of his lips—an ensemble eloquent of brazen effrontery, the outgrowth of perception of the fact that Lanyard, being what he was, could neither shoot him down in cold blood nor, with the Brooke girl present, even attempt to injure him: compunctions unassembled in the make-up of the Boche, therefore when discovered in men of other races at once despicable and ridiculous. …

The gag came away.

"Mademoiselle has not been injured?" Lanyard enquired, solicitous.

The girl coughed and gasped, shaking her head, enunciating with difficulty in little better than a husky whisper: "… roughly handled, nothing worse."

Lanyard's face burned as if his blood were molten mercury. "Nothing worse!" Appreciation of what