mahogany, on which his right hand had been resting, seemed fairly to leap from its place as, with a sweep of his arm, he sent it spinning point-blank at the younger sergent.
Before that one, wholly unprepared, could more than gasp, the humidor caught him a blow like a kick just below the breastbone. He reeled, the breath left him in one great gust, he sat down abruptly—blue eyes wide with a look of aggrieved surprise—clapped both hands to his middle, blinked, turned pale, and keeled over on his side.
But Lanyard hadn't waited to note results. He was busy. The fat sergent had leaped snarling upon his arm, and was struggling to hold it still long enough to snap a hand-cuff round the wrist; while the commissaire had started forward with a bellow of rage and two hands extended and itching for the adventurer's throat.
The first received a half-arm jab on the point of his chin that jarred his entire system, and without in the least understanding how it happened, found himself whirled around and laid prostrate in the commissaire's path. The latter tripped, fell, and planted two hard knees, with the bulk of his weight atop them, on the apex of the sergent's paunch.
At the same time Lanyard, leaping toward the doorway, noticed Popinot tugging at something in his hip-pocket.
Followed a vivid flash, then complete darkness: with a well-aimed kick—an elementary movement of la savate—Lanyard had dislocated the switch of the electric lights, knocking its porcelain box from the wall, breaking the connection, and creating a short-circuit which extinguished every light in that part of the house.
With his way thus apparently cleared, the police in con-
