f a muffled scream reached my ears, and:

"Great heavens! _It_ has got in!" whispered Gatton.

He raised his hand and the shrill note of a police whistle split the
silence.

The closed door was obviously too strong to be forced without the aid
of implements for the purpose, and we began to run around the house,
looking for some means of entrance. Suddenly:

"There's the way!" said Gatton, and pointed up to where the branches
of an old elm tree stretched out before a window. The glass of the
window was entirely shattered except for some few points which
glittered like daggers around the edges of the frame.

"Can you do it?"

"In the circumstances--yes!" I said.

Without more ado I began to climb the elm, stimulated by memories of
how I had entered Friar's Park. It afforded little foothold for the
first six feet and proved an even tougher job than I had anticipated,
but at last I reached a projecting limb, the bulk of which had been
sawn off. Gatton's agility was not so great as mine, but at the moment
that I half staggered and half fell into the room, I heard him
swinging himself onto the limb behind me so that as I leaped to the
open door he came tumbling in through the window, and the pair of us
raced side by side along the corridor towards an apartment facing
front from which horrifying cries and sounds of conflict now arose.

Gaining the closed door of this room, I literally hurled myself upon
it. It crashed open ... and I beheld a dreadful spectacle.

Isobel lay forced back upon a settee which occupied the window
recess--and bending over her, having her back turned towards me, was a
tall, lithe, black-clad woman who, so far as I could see, was
clutching Isobel's throat and forcing her further backward--backward
upon the cushions strewn upon the settee!

But instant upon the door's opening this horrible scene changed. With
never a backward glance (so that neither Gatton nor I had even a
momentary glimpse of her face) the black-robed woman sprang to the
window, opened it in a moment, and to my dismay and astonishment
sprang out into the darkness!

My first thought was for Isobel--but Gatton leaped across the room and
craned out, peering on to the path below. Indeed, even as I dropped on
my knees beside the swooning girl, I found myself listening for the
thud of the falling body upon the gravel path. But no sound reached
me. That uncanny creature must have alighted truly in the manner of a
cat. Through th