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It was a scene of wild confusion into which he stepped—a bourgeois-looking dining room it might have been, or the salle à manger of a pension. There were bottles, mostly empty, and glasses, mostly broken, upon a heavy sideboard which took up one wall of the apartment. In its centre was a long table laden with more empty bottles, plates and debris of various kinds, and—most tragical sight of all—in the far corner, nearer to the window, a girl, bound with stout cords to a heavy easy-chair. Her dark, almost black hair had become disordered as though in a struggle and there was a long stain of blood on her face. Her cheeks were ghastly pale, her already red-rimmed eyes were flaming with terror. Her once fashionable grey dress was torn and dishevelled. There was blood on her finger tips where she had been plucking at the cords.

"Brutes!" he cried. "Don't struggle. I'll have you out of that in a moment."

He added a word of reassurance in Russian whilst he searched his pockets for a knife. To his amazement she answered him, chokingly, but in unmistakable English.