377CHAPTER XXXIIIA RAT HUNT
The interior of the entire house was now in an uproar; shots came fast from every landing; the semi-dusk of stair-well and corridor was lighted by incessant pistol flashes and the whole building echoed the deafening racket.
“What do you make of it?” shouted Sengoun furiously, standing like a baited and perplexed bull. “Who’s fighting who in this fool of a place? By Erlik! I’d like to know whom I’m to fire at!”
Ilse Dumont, creeping along the wall, looked fearfully down at Weishelm who no longer moved where he lay on the dusty floor, with eyes and mouth open and his distorted face already half covered by a wet and crawling scarlet mask.
“Brandes and Stull are betraying us,” she whispered. “They are killing my comrades—on the stairs down there––”
“If that is true,” called out Neeland in a low, cautious voice, “you’d better wait a moment, Sengoun!”
But Sengoun’s rage for combat had already filled him to overflowing, and the last rag of patience left him.
“I don’t care who is fighting!” he bellowed. “It’s all one to me! Now is the time to shoot our way out of this. Come on, Neeland! Hurrah for the Terek Cossacks! Another town taken! Hurrah!”
Neeland caught Ilse by the wrist:378
“You’d better get free of this house while you can!” he said, dragging her with him after Sengoun, who had already reached the head of the stairs and was starting down, peering about for a target.
Suddenly, on the landing below, Golden Beard and Ali Baba appeared, caught sight of Sengoun and Neeland above, and opened fire on them instantly, driving them back from the head of the staircase flat against the corridor wall. But Golden Beard, seeming to realise now that the garret landing was held and the way to the roof cut off, began to retreat from the foot of the garret stairs with Ali Baba following, their restless, upward-pointed pistols searching for the slightest movement in the semi-obscurity of the hallway above.
Sengoun, fuming and fretting, had begun to creep toward the head of the stairs again, when there came a rattling hail of shots from below, a rush, the trample of feet, the crash of furniture and startling slam of a door.
Downstairs straight toward the uproar ran Sengoun with Neeland beside him. The halls were swimming in acrid fumes; the floors trembled and shook under the shock as a struggling, fighting knot of men went tumbling down the stairway below, reached the landing and burst into the rooms of the Cercle Extranationale.
Leaning over the banisters, Neeland saw Golden Beard turn on Doc Curfoot, raging, magnificent as a Viking, his blue eyes ablaze. He hurled his empty pistol at the American; seized chairs, bronzes, andirons, the clock from the mantel, and sent a storm of heavy missiles through the doorway among the knot of men who were pressing him and who had already seized Ali Baba.
Then, from the banisters above, Neeland and379Sengoun saw Brandes, moving stealthily, swiftly, edge his way to a further door.
Steadying the elbow of his pistol hand in the hollow cup of his left palm, his weapon level, swerving as his quarry moved, he presently fired at Golden Beard and got him through the back. And then he shot him again deliberately, through the body, as the giant turned, made a menacing gesture toward him; took an uncertain step in his direction; another step, wavering, blindly grotesque; then stood swaying there under the glare of the partly shattered chandelier from which hung long shreds of crystal prisms.
And Brandes, aiming once more with methodical and merciless precision, and taking what time he required to make a bull’s-eye on this great, reeling, golden-crowned bull, fired the third shot at his magnificent head.
The bronze Barye lion dropped from Golden Beard’s nerveless fist; the towering figure, stiffening, fell over rather slowly and lay across the velvet carpet as rigid as a great tree.
Brandes went into the room, leaned over the dying man and fired into his body until his pistol was empty. Then he replaced the exhausted clip leisurely, leering down at his victim.
There was a horrid sound from the stairs, where Curfoot and another man were killing a waiter. Strange, sinister faces appeared everywhere from the smoke-filled club rooms; Stull came out into the hallway below and shouted up through the stair-well:
“Say, Eddie! For Christ’s sake come down here! There’s a mob outside on the street and they’re tearing the iron shutters off the café!”
Curfoot immediately started downstairs; Brandes, pistol in hand, came slowly out of the club rooms, still380leering, his slitted, greenish eyes almost phosphorescent in the semi-obscurity.
Suddenly he caught sight of Ilse Dumont standing close behind Sengoun and Neeland on the landing above.
“By God!” he shouted to Curfoot. “Here she is, Doc! Tell your men! Tell them she’s up here on the next floor!”
Sengoun immediately fired at Brandes, who did not return the shot but went plunging downstairs into the smoky obscurity below.
“Come on!” roared Sengoun to Neeland, starting forward with levelled weapon. “They’ve all gone crazy and it’s time we were getting out of this!”
“Quick!” whispered Neeland to Ilse Dumont. “Follow me downstairs! It’s the only chance for you now!”
But the passageway was blocked by a struggling, cursing, panting crowd, and they were obliged to retreat into the club rooms.
In thesalle de jeu, Ali Baba, held fast by three men dressed as waiters, suddenly tripped up two of them, turned, and leaped for the doorway. The two men who had been tripped scrambled to their feet and tore after him. When they reached the hallway the Eurasian was gone; but all of a sudden there came the crash of a splintered door from the landing above; and the dim corridor rang with the frightful screaming of a woman.
“It’s—that—that—Russian girl!” stammered Ilse Dumont; “—The girl I locked in! Oh, my God!—my God! Karl Breslau is killing her!”
Neeland sprang into the hall and leaped up the stairs; but the three men disguised as waiters had arrived before him.
And there, across the threshold of the bedroom, backed up flat against the shattered door, Ali Baba381was already fighting for his life; and the frightened Russian girl crept out from the bedroom behind him and ran to Neeland for protection.
Twice Neeland aimed at Ali Baba, but could not bring himself to fire at the bleeding, rabid object which snarled and slavered and bit and kicked, regardless of the blows raining on him. At last one of his assailants broke the half demented creature’s arm with a chair; and the bloody, battered thing squeaked like a crippled rat and darted away amid the storm of blows descending, limping and floundering up the attic stairs, his broken arm flapping with every gasping bound.
After him staggered his sweating and exhausted assailants, reeling past Neeland and Ilse Dumont and the terrified Russian girl who crouched behind them. But, halfway up the stairs all three halted and stood clinging to the banisters as though listening to something on the floor above them.
Neeland heard it, too: from the roof came a ripping, splintering sound, as though people on the slates were prying up the bolted scuttle. The three men on the stairs hesitated a moment longer; then turned to flee, too late; a hail of pistol shots swept the attic stairs; all three men came pitching and tumbling down to the landing.
Two of them lay still; one rose immediately and limped on again down the hallway, calling over the banisters to those below:
“The Germans on the leads ’ave busted into the garret! Breslau is up ’ere! Send along those American gunmen, or somebody what can shoot!”
He was a grey-haired Englishman, smooth shaven and grim; and, as he stood there at the head of the382further stairs, breathing heavily, awaiting aid from below, he said to Neeland coolly enough:
“You’d better go below, sir. We ’ad our orders to take this Breslau rat alive, but we can’t do it now, and there’s like to be a ’orrid mess ’ere directly.”
“Can we get through below?”
“Youcan,” said the man significantly, “but they’ll be detaining one o’ them ladies at the door.”
“Do you mean me?” said Ilse Dumont.
“Yes, ma’am, I do––”
She sprang toward the attic stairway, but the British agent whipped out a pistol and covered her.
“No,” he said grimly. “You’re wanted below. Go down!”
She came slowly back to where Neeland was standing.
“You’ll have to take your chance below,” he said under his breath. “I’ll stand by you to the end.”
She smiled and continued on toward the stairs where the English agent stood. Neeland and the Russian girl followed her.
The agent said:
“There’s ’ell to pay below, sir.”
The depths of the house rang with the infernal din of blows falling on iron shutters. A deeper, more sinister roar rose from the mob outside. There was a struggle going on inside the building, too; Neeland could hear the trampling and surging of men on every floor—voices calling from room to room, shouts of anger, the terrible outcry of a man in agony.
“Wot a rat’s nest, then, there was in this here blessed ’ouse, sir!” said the British agent, coolly. “If we get Breslau and the others on the roof we’ve bagged ’em all.”
The Russian girl was trembling so violently that383Neeland took her by the arm. But Ilse Dumont, giving her a glance of contempt, moved calmly past the British agent to the head of the stairway.
“Come,” she said to Neeland.
The agent, leaning over the banisters, shouted to a man on the next floor:
“Look sharp below there! I’m sendin’ Miss Dumont down with Mr. Neeland, the American! Take her in charge, Bill!”
“Send her along!” bawled the man, framing his face with both hands. “Keep Breslau on the roof a bit and we’ll ’ave the beggar in a few moments!”
Somebody else shouted up from the tumult below:
“It’s war, ’Arry! ’Ave you ’eard? It’s war this morning! Them ’Uns ’as declared war! And the perlice is a-killin’ of the Apaches all over Paris!”
Ilse Dumont looked curiously at the agent, calmly at Neeland, then, dropping one hand on the banisters, she went lightly down the stairs toward the uproar below, followed by Neeland and the Russian girl clinging to his arm with both desperate little hands.
The British agent hung far over the banisters until he saw his colleague join them on the floor below; then, reassured, and on guard again, he leaned back against the corridor wall, his pistol resting on his thigh, and fixed his cold grey eyes on the attic stairs once more.
The secret agent who now joined Neeland and Ilse Dumont on the fourth floor had evidently been constructing a barricade across the hallway as a precaution in case of a rush from the Germans on the roof.
Chairs and mattresses, piled shoulder high, obstructed the passageway, blocking the stairs; and the secret agent—a very young man with red hair and in the garb of a waiter—clambered over it, revolver in384one hand, a pair of handcuffs in the other. He lost his balance on top of the shaky heap; strove desperately to recover it, scrambled like a cat in a tub, stumbled, rolled over on a mattress.
And there Neeland pinned him, closing his mouth with one hand and his throat with the other, while Ilse Dumont tore weapon and handcuffs from his grasp, snapped the latter over his wrists, snatched the case from a bedroom pillow lying among the mattresses, and, with Neeland’s aid, swathed the struggling man’s head in it.
“Into that clothes-press!” whispered Ilse, pointing along the hallway where a door swung open.
“Help me lift him!” motioned Neeland.
Together they got him clear of the shaky barricade and, lugging him between them, deposited him on the floor of the clothes-press and locked the door.
So silent had they been that, listening, they heard no movement from the watcher on the floor above, who stood guard at the attic stairs. And it was evident he had heard nothing to make him suspicious.
The Russian girl, dreadfully pale, leaned against the wall as though her limbs scarcely supported her. Neeland passed his arm under hers, nodded to Ilse Dumont, and started cautiously down the carpeted stairs, his automatic pistol in one hand, and the revolver taken from the imprisoned secret agent clutched tightly in the other.
Down the stairs they crept, straight toward the frightful tumult still raging below—down past the wrecked club rooms; past a dead man sprawling on the landing across the blood-soaked carpet—down into the depths of the dusky building toward the lighted café floor whence came the uproar of excited men, while,385from the street outside, rose the frantic yelling of the mob mingled with the crash of glass and the clanging dissonance of iron grilles and shutters which were being battered into fragments.
“It’s my chance, now!” whispered Ilse Dumont, slipping past him like a shadow.
For a moment he saw her silhouetted against the yellow electric glare on the stairs below, then, half carrying the almost helpless Russian girl, he stumbled down the last flight of stairs and pushed his way through a hurrying group of men who seemed to be searching for something, for they were tearing open cupboards and buffets, dragging out table drawers and tumbling linen, crockery, and glassware all over the black and white marble floor.
The whole place was ankle deep in shattered glass and broken bottles, and the place reeked with smoke and the odour of wine and spirits.
Neeland forced his way forward into the café, looked around for Sengoun, and saw him almost immediately.
The young Russian, flushed, infuriated, his collar gone and his coat in tatters, was struggling with some men who held both his arms but did not offer to strike him.
Behind him, crowded back into a corner near the cashier’s steel-grilled desk, stood Ilse Dumont, calm, disdainful, confronted by Brandes, whose swollen, greenish eyes, injected with blood, glared redly at her. Stull had hold of him and was trying to drag him away:
“For God’s sake, Eddie, shut your mouth,” he pleaded in English. “You can’t dothatto her, whatever she done to you!”386
But Brandes, disengaging himself with a jerk, pushed his way past Sengoun to where Ilse stood.
“I’ve got the goods onyou!” he said in a ferocious voice that neither Stull nor Curfoot recognised. “You know what you did to me, don’t you! You took my wife from me! Yes, mywife! Shewasmy wife! Sheismy wife!—For all you did, you lying, treacherous slut!—For all you’ve done to break me, double-cross me, ruin me, drive me out of every place I went! And now I’ve got you! I’ve sold you out! Get that? And you know what they’ll do to you, don’t you? Well, you’ll see when––”
Curfoot and Stull threw themselves against him, but Brandes, his round face pasty with fury, struggled back again to confront Ilse Dumont.
“Ruined me!” he repeated. “Took away from me the only thing God ever gave me for my own! Took my wife!”
“You dog!” said Ilse Dumont very slowly. “You dirty dog!”
A frightful spasm crossed Brandes’ features, and Stull snatched at the pistol he had whipped out. There was a struggle; Brandes wrenched the weapon free; but Neeland tore his way past Curfoot and struck Brandes in the face with the butt of his heavy revolver.
Instantly the group parted right and left; Sengoun suddenly twisted out of the clutches of the men who held him, sprang upon Curfoot, and jerked the pistol from his fist. At the same moment the entire front of the café gave way and the mob crashed inward with a roar amid the deafening din of shattered metal and the clash of splintering glass.
Through the dust and falling shower of débris, Brandes fired at Ilse Dumont, reeled about in the whirl of387the inrushing throng engulfing him, still firing blindly at the woman who had been his wife.
Neeland put a bullet into his pistol arm, and it fell. But Brandes stretched it out again with a supreme effort, pointing at Ilse Dumont with jewelled and bloody fingers:
“That woman is a German spy! A spy!” he screamed. “You damn French mutts, do you understand what I say! Oh, my God! Will someone who speaks French tell them! Will somebody tell them she’s a spy!La femme! Cette femme!” he shrieked. “Elle est espion! Esp––!” He fired again, with his left hand. Then Sengoun shot him through the head; and at the same moment somebody stabbed Curfoot in the neck; and the lank American gambler turned and cried out to Stull in a voice half strangled with pain and fury:
“Look out, Ben. There are apaches in this mob! That one in the striped jersey knifed me––”
“Tiens, v’la pour toi, sale mec de malheur!” muttered a voice at his elbow, and a blow from a slung-shot crushed the base of his skull.
As Curfoot crumpled up, Stull caught him; but the tall gambler’s dead weight bore Stull to his knees among the fierce apaches.
And there, fighting in silence to the end, his chalky face of a sick clown meeting undaunted the overwhelming odds against him, Stull was set upon by the apaches and stabbed and stabbed until his clothing was a heap of ribbons and the watch and packet of French bank-notes which the assassins tore from his body were dripping with his blood.
Sengoun and Neeland, their evening clothes in tatters, hatless, dishevelled, began shooting their way out388of the hell of murder and destruction raging around them.
Behind them crept Ilse Dumont and the Russian girl: dust and smoke obscured the place where the mob raged from floor to floor in a frenzy of destruction, tearing out fixtures, telephones, window-sashes, smashing tables, bar fixtures, mirrors, ripping the curtains from the windows and the very carpets from the floor in their overwhelming rage against this German café.
That apaches had entered with them the mob cared nothing; the red lust of destruction blinded them to everything except their terrible necessity for the annihilation of this place.
If they saw murder done, and robbery—if they heard shots in the tumult and saw pistol flashes through the dust and grey light of daybreak, they never turned from their raging work.
Out of the frightful turmoil stormed Neeland and Sengoun, their pistols spitting flame, the two women clinging to their ragged sleeves. Twice the apaches barred their way with bared knives, crouching for a rush; but Sengoun fired into them and Neeland’s bullets dropped the ruffian in the striped jersey where he stood over Stull’s twitching body; and the sinister creatures leaped back from the levelled weapons, turned, and ran.
Through the gaping doorway sprang Sengoun, his empty pistol menacing the crowd that choked the shadowy street; Neeland flung away his pistol and turned his revolver on those in the café behind him, as Ilse Dumont and the Russian girl crept through and out into the street.
The crowd was cheering and shouting:
“Down with the Germans! To the Brasserie Schwarz!”389
An immense wave of people surged suddenly across the rue Vilna, headed toward the German cafés on the Boulevard; and then, for the first time, Neeland caught sight of policemen standing in little groups, coolly watching the destruction of the Café des Bulgars.
Either they were too few to cope with the mob, or they were indifferent as to what was being done to a German café, but one thing was plain; the police had not the faintest idea that murder had been rampant in the place. For, when suddenly a dead body was thrown from the door out on the sidewalk, their police whistles shrilled through the street, and they started for the mob, resolutely, pushing, striking with white-gloved fists, shouting for right of way.
Other police came running, showing that they had been perfectly aware that German cafés were being attacked and wrecked. A mounted inspector forced his horse along the swarming sidewalk, crying:
“Allons! Circulez! C’est défendu de s’attrouper dans la rue! Mais fichez-moi le camp, nom de Dieu! Les Allemands ne sont pas encore dans la place!”
Along the street and on the Boulevard mobs were forming and already storming three other German cafés; a squadron of Republican Guard cavalry arrived at a trot, their helmets glittering in the increasing daylight, driving before them a mob which had begun to attack a café on the corner.
A captain, superbly mounted, rode ahead of the advancing line of horses, warning the throng back into the rue Vilna, up which the mob now recoiled, sullenly protesting.
Neeland and Sengoun and the two women were forced back with the crowd as a double rank of steel-helmeted390horsemen advanced, sweeping everybody into the rue Vilna.
Up the street, through the vague morning light, they retired between ranks of closed and silent houses, past narrow, evil-looking streets and stony alleys still dark with the shadows of the night.
Into one of these Neeland started with Ilse Dumont, but Sengoun drew him back with a sharp exclamation of warning. At the same time the crowd all around them became aware of what was going on in the maze of dusky lanes and alleys past which they were being driven by the cavalry; and the people broke and scattered like rabbits, darting through the cavalry, dodging, scuttling under the very legs of the horses.
The troop, thrown into disorder, tried to check the panic-stricken flight; a brigadier, spurring forward to learn the cause of the hysterical stampede, drew bridle sharply, then whipped his pistol out of the saddle-holster, and galloped into animpasse.
The troop captain, pushing his horse, caught sight of Sengoun and Neeland in the remains of their evening dress; and he glanced curiously at them, and at the two young women clad in the rags of evening gowns.
“Nom de Dieu!” he cried. “What are such people as you doing here? Go back! This is no quarter for honest folk!”
“What are those police doing in the alleys?” demanded Sengoun; but the captain cantered his horse up the street, pistol lifted; and they saw him fire from his saddle at a man who darted out of an alley and who started to run across the street.
The captain missed every shot, but a trooper, whose horse had come up on the sidewalk beside Neeland, fired391twice more after the running man, and dropped him at the second shot.
“A good business, too,” he said calmly, winking at Neeland. “Youbourgeoisought to be glad that we’re ordered to clean up Paris for you. And now is the time to do it,” he added, reloading his weapon.
Sengoun said in a low voice to Neeland:
“They’re ridding the city of apaches. It’s plain enough that they have orders to kill them where they find them! Look!” he added, pointing to the dead wall across the street; “It’s here at last, and Paris is cleaning house and getting ready for it! This is war, Neeland—war at last!”
Neeland looked across the street where, under a gas lamp on a rusty iron bracket, was pasted the order for general mobilisation. And on the sidewalk at the base of the wall lay a man, face downward, his dusty shoes crossed under the wide flaring trousers, the greasycasquetstill crowding out his lop ears; his hand clenched beside a stiletto which lay on the stone flagging beside him.
“An apache,” said Sengoun coolly. “That’s right, too. It’s the way we do in Russia when we clean house for war––”
His face reddened and lighted joyously.
“Thank God for my thousand lances!” he said, lifting his eyes to the yellowing sky between the houses in the narrow street. “Thank God! Thank God!”
Now, across the intersections of streets and alleys beyond where they stood, policemen and Garde cavalry were shooting into doorways, basements, and up the sombre, dusky lanes, the dry crack of their service revolvers re-echoing noisily through the street.
Toward the Boulevard below, a line of police and of392cavalrymen blocked the rue Vilna; and, beyond them, the last of the mob was being driven from the Café des Bulgars, where the first ambulances were arriving and the police, guarding the ruins, were already looking out of windows on the upper floors.
A cavalryman came clattering down the rue Vilna, gesticulating and calling out to Sengoun and Neeland to take their ladies and depart.
“Get us a taxicab—there’s a good fellow!” cried Sengoun in high spirits; and the cavalryman, looking at their dishevelled attire, laughed and nodded as he rode ahead of them down the rue Vilna.
There were several taxicabs on the Boulevard, their drivers staring up at the wrecked café. As Neeland spoke to the driver of one of the cabs, Ilse Dumont stepped back beside the silent girl whom she had locked in the bedroom.
“I gaveyoua chance,” she said under her breath. “What may I expect from you? Answer me quickly!—What am I to expect?”
The girl seemed dazed:
“N-nothing,” she stammered. “The—the horror of that place—the killing—has sickened me. I—I want to go home––”
“You do not intend to denounce me?”
“No—Oh, God! No!”
“Is that the truth? If you are lying to me it means my death.”
The girl gazed at her in horror; tears sprang to her eyes:
“I couldn’t—I couldn’t!” she stammered in a choking voice. “I’ve never before seen death—never seen how it came—how men die! This—this killing is horrible, revolting!” She had laid one trembling little393hand on Ilse Dumont’s bare shoulder. “I don’t want to have you killed; the idea of death makes me ill! I’m going home—that is all I ask for—to go home––”
She dropped her pretty head and began to sob hysterically, standing there under the growing daylight of the Boulevard, in her tattered evening gown.
Suddenly Ilse Dumont threw both arms around her and kissed the feverish, tear-wet face:
“You weren’t meant for this!” she whispered. “You do it for money. Go home. Do anything else for wages—anything except this!—Anything, I tell you––”
Neeland’s hand touched her arm:
“I have a cab. Are you going home with her?”
“I dare not,” she said.
“Then will you take this Russian girl to her home, Sengoun?” he asked. And added in a low voice: “She is one of your own people, you know.”
“All right,” said Sengoun blissfully. “I’d take the devil home if you asked me! Besides, I can talk to her about my regiment on the way. That will be wonderful, Neeland! That will be quite wonderful! I can talk to her in Russian about my regiment all the way home!”
He laughed and looked at his friend, at Ilse Dumont, at the drooping figure he was to take under his escort. He glanced down at his own ragged attire where he stood hatless, collarless, one sleeve of his evening coat ripped open to the shoulder.
“Isn’t it wonderful!” he cried, bursting out into uncontrollable laughter. “Neeland, my dear comrade, this has been the most delightfully wonderful night of my entire life! But the great miracle is still to come! Hurrah for a thousand lances! Hurrah! Town taken by Prince Erlik! Hurrah!”
And he seized the young girl whom he was to escort394to her home—wherever that hazy locality might be—and carried her in his arms to the taxicab, amid encouraging shouts of laughter from the line of cavalrymen who had been watching the proceedings from the corner of the rue Vilna.
That shout of Gallic appreciation inflamed Sengoun: he reached for his hat, to lift and wave it, but found no hat on his head. So he waved his tattered sleeve instead:
“Hurrah for France!” he shouted. “Hurrah for Russia! I’m Sengoun, of the Terek!—And I am to have a thousand lances with which to explain to the Germans my opinion of them and of their Emperor!”
The troopers cheered him from their stirrups, in spite of their officers, who pretended to check their men.
“Vive la France! Vive la Russie!” they roared. “Forward the Terek Cossacks!”
Sengoun turned to Ilse Dumont:
“Madame,” he said, “in gratitude and admiration!”—and he gracefully saluted her hand. Then, to his comrade: “Neeland!”—seizing both the American’s hands. “Such a night and such a comrade I shall never forget! I adore our night together; I love you as a brother. I shall see you before I go?”
“Surely, Sengoun, my dear comrade!”
“Alors—au revoir!” He sprang into the taxicab. “To the Russian Embassy!” he called out; and turned to the half fainting girl on the seat beside him.
“Where do you live, my dear?” he asked very gently, taking her icy hand in his.
395CHAPTER XXXIVSUNRISE
When the taxicab carrying Captain Sengoun and the unknown Russian girl had finally disappeared far away down the Boulevard in the thin grey haze of early morning, Neeland looked around him; and it was a scene unfamiliar, unreal, that met his anxious eyes.
The sun had not yet gilded the chimney tops; east and west, as far as he could see, the Boulevard stretched away under its double line of trees between ranks of closed and silent houses, lying still and mysterious in the misty, bluish-grey light.
Except for police and municipal guards, and two ambulances moving slowly away from the ruined café, across the street, the vast Boulevard was deserted; no taxicabs remained; no omnibuses moved; no early workmen passed, no slow-moving farm wagons and milk wains from the suburbs; nochiffonierswith scrap-filled sacks on their curved backs, and steel-hooked staves, furtively sorting and picking among the night’s débris on sidewalk and in gutter.
Here and there in front of half a dozen wrecked cafés little knots of policemen stood on the glass-littered sidewalk, in low-voiced consultation; far down the Boulevard, helmets gleamed dully through the haze where municipal cavalry were quietly riding off the mobs and gradually pushing them back toward the Montmartre and Villette quarters, whence they had arrived.396
Mounted Municipals still sat their beautiful horses in double line across the corner of the rue Vilna and parallel streets, closing that entire quarter where, to judge from a few fitful and far-away pistol shots, the methodical apache hunt was still in progress.
And it was a strange and sinister phase of Paris that Neeland now gazed upon through the misty stillness of early morning. For there was something terrible in the sudden quiet, where the swift and shadowy fury of earliest dawn had passed: and the wrecked buildings sagged like corpses, stark and disembowelled, spilling out their dead intestines indecently under the whitening sky.
Save for the echoes of distant shots, no louder than the breaking of a splinter—save for the deadened stamp and stir of horses, a low-voiced order, the fainter clash of spurs and scabbards—an intense stillness brooded now over the city, ominously prophetic of what fateful awakening the coming sunrise threatened for the sleeping capital.
Neeland turned and looked at Ilse Dumont. She stood motionless on the sidewalk, in the clear, colourless light, staring fixedly across the street at the débris of the gaping, shattered Café des Bulgars. Her evening gown hung in filmy tinted shreds; her thick, dark hair in lustrous disorder shadowed her white shoulders; a streak of dry blood striped one delicate bare arm.
To see her standing there on the sidewalk in the full, unshadowed morning light, silent, dishevelled, scarcely clothed, seemed to him part of the ghastly unreality of this sombre and menacing vision, from which he ought to rouse himself.
She turned her head slowly; her haggard eyes met his397without expression; and he found his tongue with the effort of a man who strives for utterance through a threatening dream:
“We can’t stay here,” he said. The sound of his own voice steadied and cleared his senses. He glanced down at his own attire, blood-stained, and ragged; felt for the loose end of his collar, rebuttoned it, and knotted the draggled white tie with the unconscious indifference of habit.
“What a nightmare!” he muttered to himself. “The world has been turned upside down over night.” He looked up at her: “We can’t stay here,” he repeated. “Where do you live?”
She did not appear to hear him. She had already started to move toward the rue Vilna, where the troopers barring that street still sat their restive horses. They were watching her and her dishevelled companion with the sophisticated amusement of men who, by clean daylight, encounter fagged-out revellers of a riotous night.
Neeland spoke to her again, then followed her and took her arm.
“Where are you going?” he repeated, uneasily.
“I shall give myself up,” she replied in a dull voice.
“To whom?”
“To the Municipals over there.”
“Give yourself up!” he repeated. “Why?”
She passed a slender hand over her eyes as though unutterably weary:
“Neeland,” she said, “I am lost already.... And I am very tired.”
“What do you mean?” he demanded, drawing her back under aporte-cochère. “You live somewhere,398don’t you? If it’s safe for you to go back to your lodgings, I’ll take you there. Is it?”
“No.”
“Well, then, I’ll take you somewhere else. I’ll find somewhere to take you––”
She shook her head:
“It is useless, Neeland. There is no chance of my leaving the city now—no chance left—no hope. It is simpler for me to end the matter this way––”
“Can’t you go to the Turkish Embassy!”
She looked up at him in a surprised, hopeless way:
“Do you suppose that any Embassy ever receives a spy in trouble? Do you really imagine that any government ever admits employing secret agents, or stirs a finger to aid them when they are in need?”
“I told you I’d stand by you,” he reminded her bluntly.
“You have been—kind—Neeland.”
“And you have been very loyal to me, Scheherazade. I shall not abandon you.”
“How can you help me? I can’t get out of this city. Wherever I go, now, it will be only a matter of a few hours before I am arrested.”
“The American Embassy. There is amanthere,” he reminded her.
She shrugged her naked shoulders:
“I cannot get within sight of the Trocadero before the secret police arrest me. Where shall I go? I have no passport, no papers, not even false ones. If I go to the lodgings where I expected to find shelter it means my arrest, court martial, and execution in acasernewithin twenty-four hours. And it would involve others who trust me—condemn them instantly to a firing399squad—if I am found by the police in their company!... No, Neeland. There’s no hope for me. Too many know me in Paris. I took a risk in coming here when war was almost certain. I took my chances, and lost. It’s too late to whimper now.”
As he stared at her something suddenly brightened above them; and he looked up and saw the first sunbeam painting a chimney top with palest gold.
“Come,” he said, “we’ve got to get out of this! We’ve got to go somewhere—find a taxicab and get under shelter––”
She yielded to the pressure of his arm and moved forward beside him. He halted for a moment on the curb, looking up and down the empty streets for a cab of any sort, then, with the instinct of a man for whom the Latin Quarter had once been a refuge and a home, he started across the Boulevard, his arm clasping hers.
All the housetops were glittering with the sun as they passed the ranks of the Municipal cavalry.
A young officer looked down mischievously as they traversed the Boulevard—the only moving objects in that vast and still perspective.
“Mon Dieu!” he murmured. “A night like that is something to remember in the winter of old age!”
Neeland heard him. The gay, bantering, irresponsible Gallic wit awoke him to himself; the rising sun, tipping the city’s spires with fire, seemed to relight a little, long-forgotten flame within him. His sombre features cleared; he said confidently to the girl beside him:
“Don’t worry; we’ll get you out of it somehow or other. It’s been a rather frightful dream, Scheherazade, nothing worse––”400
Her arm suddenly tightened against his and he turned to look at the shattered Café des Bulgars which they were passing, where two policemen stood looking at a cat which was picking its way over the mass of débris, mewing dismally.
One of the policemen, noticing them, smiled sympathetically at their battered appearance.
“Would you like to have a cat for your livelyménage?” he said, pointing to the melancholy animal which Neeland recognised as the dignified property of the Cercle Extranationale.
The other policeman, more suspicious, eyed Ilse Dumont closely as she knelt impulsively and picked up the homeless cat.
“Where are you going in such a state?” he asked, moving over the heaps of splintered glass toward her.
“Back to the Latin Quarter,” said Neeland, so cheerfully that suspicion vanished and a faint grin replaced the official frown.
“Allons, mes enfants,” he muttered. “Faut pas s’attrouper dans la rue. Also you both are a scandal.Allons! Filez! Houp!The sun is up already!”
They went out across the rue Royale toward the Place de la Concorde, which spread away before them in deserted immensity and beauty.
There were no taxicabs in sight. Ilse, carrying the cat in her arms, moved beside Neeland through the deathly stillness of the city, as though she were walking in a dream. Everywhere in the pale blue sky above them steeple and dome glittered with the sun; there were no sounds fromquaior river; no breeze stirred the trees; nothing moved on esplanade or bridge; the pale blue August sky grew bluer; the gilded tip of the obelisk glittered like a living flame.401
Neeland turned and looked up the Champs Elysées.
Far away on the surface of the immense avenue a tiny dark speck was speeding—increasing in size, coming nearer.
“A taxi,” he said with a quick breath of relief. “We’ll be all right now.”
Nearer and nearer came the speeding vehicle, rushing toward them between the motionless green ranks of trees. Neeland walked forward across the square to signal it, waited, watching its approach with a slight uneasiness.
Now it sped between the rearing stone horses, and now, swerving, swung to the left toward the rue Royale. And to his disgust and disappointment he saw it was a private automobile.
“The devil!” he muttered, turning on his heel.
At the same moment, as though the chauffeur had suddenly caught an order from within the limousine, the car swung directly toward him once more.
As he rejoined Ilse, who stood clasping the homeless cat to her breast, listlessly regarding the approaching automobile, the car swept in a swift circle around the fountain where they stood, stopped short beside them; and a woman flung open the door and sprang out to the pavement.
And Ilse Dumont, standing there in the rags of her frail gown, cuddling to her breast the purring cat, looked up to meet her doom in the steady gaze of the Princess Naïa Mistchenka.
Every atom of colour left her face, and her ashy lips parted. Otherwise, she made no sign of fear, no movement.
There was a second’s absolute silence; then the dark eyes of the Princess turned on Neeland.402
“Good heavens, James!” she said. “What has happened to you?”
“Nothing,” he said gaily, “thanks to Miss Dumont––”
“Towhom?” interrupted the Princess sharply.
“To Miss Dumont. We got into a silly place where it began to look as though we’d get our heads knocked off, Sengoun and I. I’m really quite serious, Princess. If it hadn’t been for Miss Dumont—” he shrugged; “—and that is twice she has saved my idiotic head for me,” he added cheerfully.
The Princess Naïa’s dark eyes reverted to Ilse Dumont, and the pallid girl met them steadily enough. There was no supplication in her own eyes, no shrinking, only the hopeless tranquillity that looks Destiny in the face—the gaze riveted unflinchingly upon the descending blow.
“What areyoudoing in Paris at such a time as this?” said the Princess.
The girl’s white lips parted stiffly:
“Do you need to ask?”
For a full minute the Princess bent a menacing gaze on her in silence; then:
“What do you expect fromme?” she demanded in a low voice. And, stepping nearer: “What have you to expect from anyone in France on such a day as this?”
Ilse Dumont did not answer. After a moment she dropped her head and fumbled with the rags of her bodice, as though trying to cover the delicately rounded shoulders. A shaft of sunlight, reflected from the obelisk to the fountain, played in golden ripples across her hair.
Neeland looked at the Princess Naïa:
“What you do is none of my business,” he said403pleasantly, “but—” he smiled at her and stepped back beside Ilse Dumont, and passed his arm through hers: “I’m a grateful beast,” he added lightly, “and if I’ve nine lives to lose, perhaps Miss Dumont will save seven more of them before I’m entirely done for.”
The girl gently disengaged his arm.
“You’ll only get yourself into serious trouble,” she murmured, “and you can’t help me, dear Neeland.”
The Princess Naïa, flushed and exasperated, bit her lip.
“James,” she said, “you are behaving absurdly. That woman has nothing to fear from me now, and she ought to know it!” And, as Ilse lifted her head and stared at her: “Yes, you ought to know it!” she repeated. “Your work is ended. It ended today at sunrise. And so did mine. War is here. There is nothing further for you to do; nothing for me. The end of everything is beginning. What would your death or mine signify now, when the dawn of such a day as this is the death warrant for millions? What do we count for now, Mademoiselle Minna Minti?”
“Do you not mean to give me up, madame?”
“Give you up? No. I mean to get you out of Paris if I can. Give me your cat, mademoiselle. Please help her, James––”
“You—offer me your limousine?” stammered Ilse.
“Give that cat to me. Of course I do! Do you suppose I mean to leave you in rags with your cat on the pavement here?” And, to Neeland: “Where is Alak?”
“Gone home as fit as a fiddle. Am I to receive the hospitality of your limousine also, dear lady? Look at the state I’m in to travel with two ladies!”
The Princess Naïa’s dark eyes glimmered; she tucked404the cat comfortably against her shoulder and motioned Ilse into the car.
“I’m afraid I’ll have to take you, James. What on earth has happened to you?” she added, as he put her into the car, nodded to the chauffeur, and, springing in beside her, slammed the door.
“I’ll tell you in two words,” he explained gaily. “Prince Erlik and I started for a stroll and landed, ultimately, in the Café des Bulgars. And presently a number of gentlemen began to shoot up the place, and Miss Dumont stood by us like a brick.”
The Princess Mistchenka lifted the cat from her lap and placed it in the arms of Ilse Dumont.
“That ought to win our gratitude, I’m sure,” she said politely to the girl. “We Russians never forget such pleasant obligations. There is a Cossack jingle:
“To those who befriend our friendsOur duty never ends.”
Ilse Dumont bent low over the purring cat in her lap; the Princess watched her askance from moment to moment, and Neeland furtively noted the contrast between these women—one in rags and haggard disorder; the other so trim, pretty, and fresh in her morning walking suit.
“James,” she said abruptly, “we’ve had a most horrid night, Ruhannah and I. The child waited up for you, it seems—I thought she’d gone to bed—and she came to my room about two in the morning—the little goose—as though men didn’t stay out all night!”
“I’m terribly sorry,” he said contritely.
“You ought to be.... And Ruhannah was so disturbed that I put on something and got out of bed. And after a while”—the Princess glanced sardonically405at Ilse Dumont—“I telephoned to various sources of information and was informed concerning the rather lively episodes of your nocturnal career with Sengoun. And when I learned that you and he had been seen to enter the Café des Bulgars, I became sufficiently alarmed to notify several people who might be interested in the matter.”
“One of those people,” said Neeland, smiling, “was escorted to her home by Captain Sengoun, I think.”
The Princess glanced out of the window where the early morning sun glimmered on the trees as the car flew swiftly through the Champs Elysées.
“I heard that there were some men killed there last night,” she said without turning.
“Several, I believe,” admitted Neeland.
“Wereyouthere, then?”
“Yes,” he replied, uncomfortably.
“Did you know anybody who was killed, James?”
“Yes, by sight.”
She turned to him:
“Who?”
“There was a man named Kestner; another named Weishelm. Three American gamblers were killed also.”
“And Karl Breslau?” inquired the Princess coolly.
There was a moment’s silence.
“No. I think he got away across the roofs of the houses,” replied Neeland.
Ilse Dumont, bent over the cat in her lap, stared absently into its green eyes where it lay playfully patting the rags that hung from her torn bodice.
Perhaps she was thinking of the dead man where he lay in the crowded café—the dead man who had confronted her with bloodshot eyes and lifted pistol—whose voice, thick with rage, had denounced her—whose406stammering, untaught tongue stumbled over the foreign words with which he meant to send her to her death—this dead man who once had beenherman—long ago—very, very long ago when there was no bitterness in life, no pain, no treachery—when life was young in the Western World, and Fate gaily beckoned her, wearing a smiling mask and crowned with flowers.
“I hope,” remarked the Princess Mistchenka, “that it is sufficiently early in the morning for you to escape observation, James.”
“I’m a scandal; I know it,” he admitted, as the car swung into the rue Soleil d’Or.
The Princess turned to the drooping girl beside her and laid a gloved hand lightly on her shoulder.
“My dear,” she said gently, “there is only one chance for you, and if we let it pass it will not come again—under military law.”
Ilse lifted her head, held it high, even tilted back a little.
The Princess said:
“Twenty-four hours will be given for all Germans to leave France. But—you took your nationality from the man you married. You are American.”
The girl flushed painfully:
“I do not care to take shelter under his name,” she said.
“It is the only way. And you must get to the coast in my car. There is no time to lose. Every vehicle, private and public, will be seized for military uses this morning. Every train will be crowded; every foot of room occupied on the Channel boats. There is only one thing for you to do—travel with me to Havre as my American maid.”
“Madame—would you do that—for me?”407
“Why, I’ve got to,” said the Princess Mistchenka with a shrug. “I am not a barbarian to leave you to a firing squad, I hope.”
The car had stopped; the chauffeur descended and came around to open the door.
“Caron,” said the Princess, “no servants are stirring yet. Take my key, find a cloak and bring it out—and a coat for Monsieur Neeland—the one that Captain Sengoun left the other evening. Have you plenty of gasoline?”
“Plenty, madame.”
“Good. We leave for Havre in five minutes. Bring the cloak and coat quickly.”
The chauffeur hastened to the door, unlocked it, disappeared, then came out carrying a voluminous wrap and a man’s opera cloak. The Princess threw the one over Ilse Dumont; Neeland enveloped himself in the other.
“Now,” murmured the Princess Naïa, “it will look more like a late automobile party than an ambulance after a free fight—if any early servants are watching us.”
She descended from the car; Ilse Dumont followed, still clasping the cat under her cloak; and Neeland followed her.
“Be very quiet,” whispered the Princess. “There is no necessity for servants to observe what we do––”
A small and tremulous voice from the head of the stairs interrupted her:
“Naïa! Is it you?”
“Hush, Ruhannah! Yes, darling, it is I. Everything is all right and you may go back to bed––”
“Naïa! Where is Mr. Neeland?” continued the voice, fearfully.408
“He is here, Rue! He is all right. Go back to your room, dear. I have a reason for asking you.”
Listening, she heard a door close above; then she touched Ilse on the shoulder and motioned her to follow up the stairs. Halfway up the Princess halted, bent swiftly over the banisters:
“James!” she called softly.
“Yes?”
“Go into the pantry and find a fruit basket and fill it with whatever food you can find. Hurry, please.”
He discovered the pantry presently, and a basket of fruit there. Poking about he contrived to disinter from various tins and ice-boxes some cold chicken and biscuits and a bottle of claret. These he wrapped hastily in a napkin which he found there, placed them in the basket of fruit, and came out into the hall just as Ilse Dumont, in the collar and cuffs and travelling coat of a servant, descended, carrying a satchel and a suitcase.
“Good business!” he whispered, delighted. “You’re all right now, Scheherazade! And for heaven’s sake, keep out of France hereafter. Do you promise?”
He had taken the satchel and bag from her and handed both, and the fruit basket, to Caron, who stood outside the door.
In the shadowy hall those two confronted each other now, probably for the last time. He took both her hands in his.
“Good-bye, Scheherazade dear,” he said, with a new seriousness in his voice which made the tone of it almost tender.
“G-good-bye––” The girl’s voice choked; she bent her head and rested her face on the hands he held clasped in his.
He felt her hot tears falling, felt the slender fingers409within his own tighten convulsively; felt her lips against his hand—an instant only; then she turned and slipped through the open door.
A moment later the Princess Naïa appeared on the stairs, descending lightly and swiftly, her motor coat over her arm.
“Jim,” she said in a low voice, “it’s the wretched girl’s only chance. They know about her; they’re looking for her now. But I am trusted by my Ambassador; I shall have what papers I ask for; I shall get her through to an American steamer.”
“Princess Naïa, you are splendid!”
“You don’t think so, Jim; you never did.... Be nice to Rue. The child has been dreadfully frightened about you.... And,” added the Princess Mistchenka with a gaily forced smile, resting her hand on Neeland’s shoulder for an instant, “don’t ever kiss Rue Carew unless you mean it with every atom of your heart and soul.... I know the child.... And I know you. Be generous to her, James. All women need it, I think, from such men as you—such men as you,” she added laughingly, “who know not what they do.”
If there was a subtle constraint in her pretty laughter, if her gay gesture lacked spontaneity, he did not perceive it. His face had flushed a trifle under her sudden badinage.
“Good-bye,” he said. “Youaresplendid, and Idothink so. I know you’ll win through.”
“I shall. I always do—except with you,” she added audaciously. And “Look for me tomorrow!” she called back to him through the open door; and slammed it behind her, leaving him standing there alone in the dark and curtained house.