battle with a man half-crazed with fright and struggling so madly that he well-nigh frustrated the efforts of his rescuer.
Its progress remained forever a blank in Alan's memory. He knew that he was doing his best to save an enemy from annihilation: that was all. How he contrived to lift the fellow with his left arm high enough to get a grip on his collar and hold him so until his arms caught the girder and he was able to help himself up—with much assistance—was something inexplicable.
Yet it happened so, in the upshot, the assassin lay like a limp rag across the girder, head and arms hanging on one side, legs and feet on the other, spent with his terrific exertions and physically sick with terror.
In this state Alan left him; he had done enough; let the man shift for himself from this time on. Cautiously crawling over the other's body, he edged along to the head of the ladder. When he looked back from safety, the cut-throat lay as Alan had left him, kicking convulsively. And the window across the way was blank.
Reflecting that little noise had marked the progress of that duel in the dark, that Rose in consequence could hardly have known anything of it, he let himself down story by story to the street, and made off without pausing to see whether the night watchman's blatant slumbers were real or feigned.
