that it almost unseated him at the end of the swing. But nothing less would have served to bridge that yawning chasm. And the watch flew, straight and true, squarely through the lighted window and to the farther wall. …
That much he saw, but whether the girl came to the window after picking it up he never knew. In that very instant he heard a sound behind him of heavy breathing. The assassin had come close upon his prey when Alan turned and discovered his peril. Crawling, as Alan had crawled, on hands and knees along the girder, the man had inched up within a yard.
The moonbeam which had aided Alan in the composition of his message struck across the other's face and showed it like a mask of deadly hatred, with its eyeballs glaring and its lips drawn back from the naked blade gripped between its teeth—a stiletto nothing sort of a foot in length.
With a low cry of desperation Alan snatched off his hat, a soft and shapeless felt affair, and flung it squarely in the fellow's face. Before he could recover—before, that is, it dropped away and cleared his vision—Alan had bent forward and grasped the wrist of the hand that held the knife. He snatched simultaneously at the other hand, but it eluded him.
Immediately the two became engaged in a furious contest for possession of the stiletto. Alan had this
