above his head. The battering blow would, no doubt,
have burst panel, lock, and hinges the next instant, but again Rupert
forestalled him, and charged him before the door could be reached.

Overbalanced by the weight he held aloft, Captain Jack was hurled down
headlong beneath the ladder, and lay for a moment stunned by the
violence of the fall.

When the clouds cleared away it was to let him see Rupert's face
bending over him, his pale lips wreathed into a smile of malignant
exultation.

"Caught!" said Mr. Landale, slowly, pausing over each word as though
to prolong the savour of it in his mouth, "caught this time! And it is
your mistress's hand that puts the noose round your neck. That is what
I call poetical justice."

The prostrate man, collecting his scattered wits and his vast
strength, made a violent effort to spring to his feet. But Rupert's
whole weight was upon him, his long thin fingers were gripping him by
each shoulder, his face grinned at him, close, detested, infuriating.
The grasp that held him seemed to belong to no flesh and blood, it was
as the grasp of skeleton hands, the grinning face became like a
death's head.

"I shall come to your hanging, Captain Jack Smith, or rather, Mr.
Hubert Cochrane of the Shaws."

These were the last words of Rupert Landale. A red whirl passed
through the sailor's brain, his hands fell like lashes round the
other's neck and drew it down. _If Hubert Cochrane dies so does Rupert
Landale: that throat shall never give sound to that name again._

Over and over they roll like savage beasts, but yet in deathly
silence. For the pressure of the fingers on his gullet, fingers that
seem to gain fresh strength every moment and pierce into his very
flesh, will not allow even a sigh to pass Rupert's lips, and Jack can
spare no atom of his energy from the fury of fight: not one to spare
even for the hearing of the frantic knocks at the door, the calls,
the hammering at the lock, the desperate efforts without to prise it
open.

_But if Rupert Landale must die so shall Hubert Cochrane, and by the
hangman's hand, treble doomed by this._ The same thought fills both
these men's heads; the devil of murder has possession of both their
souls. But, true to himself to the last, it is with Rupert a
calculating devil. The officers must soon be here: he will hold the
scoundrel yet with the grasp of death, and his enemy shall be found
red-handed--red-handed!

His hatred, his determinat