turned Turnbull's thrusts with a maddening and almost mechanical
click, like that of a machine. Whenever Turnbull's sword sought
to go over that other mere white streak it seemed to be caught in
a complex network of steel. He turned one thrust, turned another,
turned another. Then suddenly he went forward at the lunge with
his whole living weight. Turnbull leaped back, but Evan lunged
and lunged and lunged again like a devilish piston rod or
battering ram. And high above all the sound of the struggle there
broke into the silent evening a bellowing human voice, nasal,
raucous, at the highest pitch of pain. "Help! Help! Police!
Murder! Murder!" The gag was broken; and the tongue of terror
was loose.

"Keep on!" gasped Turnbull. "One may be killed before they come."

The voice of the screaming shopkeeper was loud enough to drown
not only the noise of the swords but all other noises around it,
but even through its rending din there seemed to be some other
stir or scurry. And Evan, in the very act of thrusting at
Turnbull, saw something in his eyes that made him drop his sword.
The atheist, with his grey eyes at their widest and wildest, was
staring straight over his shoulder at the little archway of shop
that opened on the street beyond. And he saw the archway blocked
and blackened with strange figures.

"We must bolt, MacIan," he said abruptly. "And there isn't a
damned second to lose either. Do as I do."

With a bound he was beside the little cluster of his clothes and
boots that lay on the lawn; he snatched them up, without waiting