A scroll of flame
unrolled slowly in his brain and a voice shouted there, "You're dying!"
He felt dimly a plucking at his ankles.

Abruptly Ennis' dimming mind was aware that he now was shooting upward
through the water. His head burst into open air and he choked, strangled
and gasped, his tortured lungs gulping the damp, heavy air. He opened
his eyes, and shook the water from them.

He was floating in the darkness at the surface of the water. Someone was
floating beside him, supporting him. Ennis' chin bumped the other's
shoulder, and he heard a familiar voice.

"Easy, now," said Inspector Campbell. "Wait till I cut your hands
loose."

"Campbell!" Ennis choked. "How did you get loose?"

"Never mind that now," the inspector answered. "Don't make any noise, or
they may hear us up there."

Ennis felt a knife-blade slashing the bonds at his wrists. Then, the
inspector's arm helping him, he and his companion paddled weakly through
the darkness under the rotting pier. They bumped against the slimy,
moldering piles, threaded through them toward the side of the pier. The
waves of the flooding tide washed them up and down as Campbell led the
way.

They passed out from under the old pier into the comparative
illumination of the stars. Looking back up, Ennis saw the long, black
mass of the house of Chandra Dass, resting on the black pier, ruddy
light glowing from window-cracks. He collided with something and found
that Campbell had led toward a little floating dock where some skiffs
were moored. They scrambled up onto it from the water, and lay panting
for a few moments.

Campbell had something in his hand, a thin, razor-edged steel blade
several inches long. Its hilt was an ordinary leather shoe-heel.

The inspector turned up one of his feet and Ennis saw that the heel was
missing from that shoe. Carefully Campbell slid the steel blade beneath
the shoe-sole, the heel-hilt sliding into place and seeming merely the
innocent heel of the shoe.

"So that's how you got loose down in the water!" Ennis exclaimed, and
the inspector nodded briefly.

"That trick's done me good service before--even with your hands tied
behind your back you can get out that knife and use it. It was touch and
go, though, whether I could get it out and cut myself loose in the water
in time enough to free you."

Ennis gripped the inspector's shoulder. "Campbell, Ruth is in there! By
heaven, we've found her and now we can get her out!"

"Right!