Then he sprang cat-like to the door, whirled it open, scudded round the angle of the passage to the entrance of the room where the fraudulent collection was kept, and went in with the silent fleetness of a panther.

And a moment later, when Captain Travers and Mrs.Bawdrey swung in through the door and joined him, they came upon a horrifying sight.
For there, leaning against the open door of the case where the skeleton of the nine-fingered man hung, was Dollops, bleeding and faint, and with a score of tooth-marks on his neck and throat, and on the floor at his feet Cleek was kneeling on the writhing figure of a man, who bit and tore and snarled like a cornered wolf and fought with teeth and feet and hands alike in the wild effort to get free from the grip of destiny.

A locked handcuff clamped one wrist, and from it swung, at the end of the connecting chain, its unlocked mate; the marks of Dollops' fists were on his lips and cheeks, and at the foot of the case, where the hanging skeleton doddered and shook to the vibration of the floor, lay a shattered phial of deep-blue glass.
"Got you, you hound!" said Cleek, through his teeth as he wrenched the man's two wrists together and snapped the other handcuff into place.
"You beast of ingratitude--you Judas! Kissing and betraying like any other Iscariot! And a dear old man like that! Look here, Mrs.Bawdrey; look here Captain, Travers; what do you think of a little rat like this ?" They came forward at his word, and, looking down, saw that the figure he was bending over was the figure of Philip Bawdrey.
"Oh!" gulped Mrs.Bawdrey, and then shut her two hands over her eyes and fell away weak and shivering.

"Oh, Mr.Cleek, it can't be--it can't! To do a thing like that ?" "Oh, he'd have done worse, the little reptile, if he hadn't been pulled up short," said Cleek in reply.

"He'd have hanged you for it, if it had gone the way he planned.