acing the house, revolver in hand, watching.

There was a moment's pause, a sound of movement from the upper part of
the ruin, another quiet moment, and then a bang and a flash from high on
the wall to the right. Hewitt sprang to shelter behind the heavy shore,
and another shot followed him, scoring a white line across the thick
timber.

Plummer was up, and Styles and I were after him.

"There he is!" cried Plummer, "up on the coping!" I pulled out my own
pistol.

"Don't shoot!" cried Hewitt. "We'll take him alive!"

Far to the right, on the topmost coping of the front wall, I could see a
crouching figure. I saw it rise to its knees, and once more raise an arm
to take aim at Hewitt; and then, with a sudden cry, another human figure
appeared from behind the coping and sprang upon the first. There was a
moment of struggle, and then the rotten coping crumbled, and down, down,
came bricks and men together.

I sickened. I can only explain my feeling by saying that never before
had I seen anything that seemed so long in falling as those two men. And
then with a horrid crash they struck the broken ground, and the pistol
fired again with the shock.

We reached them in a dozen strides, and turned them over, limp, oozing,
and lifeless. And then we saw that one was Mayes, and the other--Victor
Peytral!

We kept no silence now, but Plummer blew his whistle loud and long, and
I fired my revolver into the air, chamber after chamber. Styles started
off at a run along the path towards the town lights, to fetch what aid
he might.

But even then we had doubt if any aid would avail Mayes. He was the
under man in the fall, and he had dropped across a little heap of
bricks. He now lay unconscious, breathing heavily, with a terrible wound
at the back of the head, and Hewitt foretold--and rightly--that when the
doctor did come he would find a broken spine. Peytral, on the other
hand, though unconscious, showed no sign of injury, and just before the
doctor came sighed heavily and turned on his side.

First there came policemen, and then in a little time a hastily dressed
surgeon, and after him an ambulance. Mayes was carried off to hospital,
but with a good deal of rubbing and a little brandy, Peytral came round
well enough to be helped over the Marshes to a cab.

The trap which had been laid for Hewitt was simple, but terribly
effective. The floor above the hall--loose and broken everywhere--was
supported on rafters, and the raf