The rush was
checked for the moment. But the odds were fearful.
Kennedy seized Elaine's yielding body and, pushing back the
curtains to the anteroom, succeeded in gaining it, and locking the
door into the main temple.
Bennett was still lying on the floor tightly bound. With a few
deft cuts by a Chinese knife which he had picked up, Kennedy
released him.
At the same time, Chinamen were trying to batter down the door,
Kennedy's last bulwark. It was swaying under their repeated blows.
Kennedy rushed to the door and fired through it at random to check
the attack for a few moments.
. . . . . . . .
While Kennedy was thus besieged by the devil worshippers in the
anteroom, several policemen and detectives gathered in the seance
room with us, next door, where Savetsky was held a defiant and
mute prisoner.
I had discovered the bell, and, taking that as a guide, I started
to trace the course of a wire which ran alongside the wall,
feeling certain that it would give me a clue to some adjoining
room to which Elaine might possibly have been taken.
To the fireplace I traced the bell, and, in pulling on the wire, I
luckily pressed a secret spring. To my amazement, the whole
fireplace swung out of sight and disclosed a secret passageway.
I looked through it.
It was almost at that precise instant that the door of the
anteroom burst open and the Chinamen swarmed in, urged on by the
insane exhortations of Long Sin.
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