"Goodwin! Dr. Goodwin!"

Amazed, I turned. From behind the pedestal of a carved group
slunk--Marakinoff! My premonition had been right. Some way he had
escaped, slipped through to here. He held his hands high, came forward
cautiously.

"I am finished," he whispered--"Done! I don't care what _they'll_ do
to me." He nodded toward the handmaiden and Larry, now at the end of
the bridge and passing on, oblivious of all save each other. He drew
closer. His eyes were sunken, burning, mad; his face etched with deep
lines, as though a graver's tool had cut down through it. I took a
step backward.

A grin, like the grimace of a fiend, blasted the Russian's visage.
He threw himself upon me, his hands clenching at my throat!

"Larry!" I yelled--and as I spun around under the shock of his
onslaught, saw the two turn, stand paralyzed, then race toward me.

"But _you'll_ carry nothing out of here!" shrieked Marakinoff. "No!"

My foot, darting out behind me, touched vacancy. The roaring of the
racing stream deafened me. I felt its mists about me; threw myself
forward.

I was falling--falling--with the Russian's hand strangling me. I
struck water, sank; the hands that gripped my throat relaxed for a
moment their clutch. I strove to writhe loose; felt that I was being