Steve with the gun.
The butler grabbed Steve first. Together they went reeling toward the
window. Oddly it wasn't any thought of escape that made Steve swing the struggle
in that direction. His own plight seemed mild compared with the fact that The
Harlequin was escaping, and he hoped that at the window, they might spot the
fleeing murderer. But when the butler tried to haul Steve back, using his throat
as a handle so he couldn't even talk, the folly of it maddened Steve.
Driving the heel of his hand right to the butler's chin, Steve sent the
fellow back against the desk. Finding himself free, Steve vaulted the sill in
The Harlequin's style, beckoning, for Treft's men to follow.
What followed was a big-throated blast from the shotgun. Fortunately Steve
was below the window level when it came, but he remembered that the shotgun had
two barrels. Rather than take chances with the second, Steve made for the
magnolias and was flattening among them when the second blast came roaring from
the window.
The tree boughs crackled overhead and amid a shower of withering blossoms,
Steve decided not to wait until his pursuer reloaded. Besides, Steve wanted to
find The Harlequin, so he took off down the driveway, which seemed the logical
path that the murderer would have taken.
From then on, the real nightmare began.
Treft's premises were more amply guarded than Steve supposed and the
gunfire from the mansion had roused all drowsing retainers. Dashing down the
driveway, Steve saw flashlights glaring from a gateway through which he had
driven on his way here. Turning, he fled back to the house, just as shotguns
ripped; thanks to the curve of the driveway, the volley didn't reach him.
But there were other lights ahead and they meant gunners from the mansion,
so Steve took to a side driveway that he fancied would lead him to a distant
gate, which it would have, if he followed it. He didn't because he saw other
lights approaching him, so in desperation, Steve stumbled off among the trees,
hoping he would arrive anywhere except among Treft's men.
By then, Steve had lost all sense of direction. He was combining two
policies; one, to keep going as fast as he could run or stumble; the other, to
avoid all lights. As a result, his course became a swift but uncertain zigzag
that must have turned him full about. For the lights seemed everywhere, blinking
distantly through the trees, and Steve shied from them as if they were the
shotguns that they represented.
There were shouts, too, that seemed to indicate some diabolical design on
the part of Steve's misguided hunters. They were trying to box him somewhere and
wherever it was, Steve didn't want to find the place. He remembered that Treft's
extensive estate was fenced with high iron pickets, because he had driven half
way around it to reach the front road. Obviously Treft's aggregation was trying
to corner him somewhere between gates.
All Steve wanted was to find that fence. He didn't want a gate, because he
was sure somebody would be there. Judging by the lights, Treft's men were
sufficient to replenish a regiment, unless Steve had been spotting the same
searchers six times over. But if Steve found the fence, he'd be willing to scale
it, pickets or no pickets.
Steve didn't find the fence.
Out of the range of lights, plunging between trees that he could see in the
struggling moonlight, stumbling across rocks that the glow didn't show, Steve
