Page:Walpole--portrait of man with red hair.djvu/317

 for a moment as though the pillar itself would fall.

The cord that tied him to the pillar snapped and his hands were free. He tottered, the blood pouring from his face. He moved, blindly, staggering. Not a sound had come from him since that first cry.

His hands flung out, and in another moment Crispin was caught into his arms. He raised him. The little fat hands fluttered. The knife flashed loosely and fell to the ground. The giant swung into the middle of the room blinded, but holding to himself ever tighter and ever tighter the short fat body.

Crispin, his head tossed back, his legs flung out in an agony now of terror, screamed with a strange shrill cry like a rabbit entrapped.

Jabez turned, and now he had Crispin's soft chest against his bleeding face, the arms fluttering above his head. As he turned his shoulder touched the glass of the window. He pushed backward with his arm and the window swung open, some of the broken glass tinkling to the ground. There was a great rush of air.

That strange thing, like no human body, the white silk, the brown slippers, the red hair, swung. For one second of time, suspended as it were on the thread of that long animal scream, so shrill and yet so thin and distant, the white face, its little eyes staring, the painted mouth open, hung towards Harkness. Then into the air like a coloured bundle of worthless junk, for a moment a dark shadow