e dared not shoot on my account, and I had no weapon but my two bare
hands.

Not so our antagonist, however. Of a sudden one side of my face felt
as if some one had quickly drawn the tip of a red-hot poker from the
corner of my eye to my chin. At the same instant a crushing blow
caught me above one ear.

The blow did not render me unconscious, but it more than staggered me.
For an instant such strength as was left me was needed to keep from
tumbling headlong. I was on my knees and one hand, while the other arm
was hooked over the rim of the tub.

The fight had ended. I could hear a patter of feet on the rear stairs;
I could hear some one near me on the floor, breathing heavily; then
fell silence. I tried to yell to Stodger to be up and after them, but
the result was only a painful wheezing in my throat. Then the gasping
form on the floor groaned, and I managed to get dizzily to my feet.

We received the worst of that fight in more ways than one. When I
managed to find a candle and light it, I discovered that Stodger was
the one who had groaned. He was sitting up, not badly hurt, and
staring dazedly at the candle. His mouth hung ludicrously open. But
in a moment he struggled upright.

"Good God, Swift!" he gasped. "You 've been butchered!"

Then I recalled the red-hot poker. I put a hand to my cheek; it came
away covered with blood. From the shoulder down, my clothes were
saturated with it, and I had left a crimson trail to mark each of my
movements since the keen-edged blade had laid my face open.

But enough of the wound. The white pucker of scar which to-day
disfigures my face will be a life-long memento of that spirited combat
in the dark.

After we were in condition to do so, Stodger and I set about an
inspection of the scene.

First of all, we did n't find a trace of our adversaries, or how many
of them there might have been, until we came to the snow outside. An
open dining-room window indicated their method of ingress, the trampled
snow beneath their number. There had been five.

"Why the bath room?" Stodger demanded, in deep perplexity. "Why should
everything that happens in this house be pulled off there?"

Why indeed?

"Let's go back there and try to find out," I returned, stiffly, for my
cheek was paining under the mass of plaster that Stodger had piled upon
it.

Carefully and systematically, we went over every inch of space--I don't
know how many times I had done so since th