Chapter 24: The God Out of the Machine.

How it all happened I have but a misty notion.

My eyelids were twitching; my eyes were neither shut nor open. I could not look, nor hide from myself the knowledge of what was being done. I saw the silent woman, the whiteness of her flesh, the gleam of steel, the tall figure stooping over her. There were the attendant demons, one on either side. All was still. My voice had perished, I could no longer utter a sound. And all that was done by the man with the knife was done in silence.

So acute was the stillness I listened for the entry of the steel into the flesh—as if that were audible!

Then, on a sudden, all was pandemonium. Of the exact sequence in which events occurred, I have, as I have said, but a shadowy impression.

Something struck the fellow with the knife full in the face. What it was at the moment I could not tell. I learnt afterwards that it was a soft, peaked sailor’s cap, thrown by a strong wrist, with unerring aim. The impact was not a slight one. Taken unawares the tall man staggered; he had been hit clean between the eyes. He put his hand up to his face, as if bewildered. Before he had it down again he had been seized by the shoulders, flung to the ground, and the knife wrenched from him.

His assailant was Captain Lander.

“Lander!” I gasped.

The captain glanced in my direction, then at the woman stretched upon the table, then at the gentleman upon the floor. Him he appeared to recognise.

“So it’s you, is it? What devil’s work have you been up to now? This is not Tongkin! Look out there—stop ‘em, my lads!”

The attendant demons, perceiving that a change had come o’er the spirit of the scene, were making for the window, judging, doubtless, discretion to be the better part of valour. I then learned that Captain Lander was not alone. He had three companions. These made short work of stopping the flight of the ingenuous colleagues. One of the captain’s companions, a man of somewhat remarkable build, gripping the pair by the nape of the neck by either hand, banged their heads together. It was a spectacle which I found agreeable to behold.