The Dark Star Part 85

"I did not before understand Mahmud's delay. Now, I understand. He has been warned. Breslau and Kestner will not come. Otherwise, you now would be barricaded behind that breastwork of rubbish, fighting for your lives."

"But you say there are men on the stairs below who are ready to kill us if we try to leave the house."

"They, too, are trapped without knowing it. War will come with sunrise. This house has been under surveillance since yesterday afternoon. They have not closed in on us yet, because they are leaving the trap open in hopes of catching us all. They are waiting for Breslau and Kestner and Mahmud Damat.... But they'll never come, now.... They are out of the city by this time.... I know them. They are running for their lives at this hour.... And we--we lesser ones--caught here--trapped--reserved for a French court martial and a firing squad in a barrack square!"

She shuddered and pressed her hands over her temples.

Neeland said:

"I am going to stand by you. Captain Sengoun will do the same."

She shook her head:

"No use," she said with a s.h.i.+ver. "I am too well known. They have my _dossier_ almost complete. My _proces_ will be a brief one."

"Can't you get away by the roof? There are two of your men up there."

"They themselves are caught, and do not even know it. They too will face a squad of execution before the sun rises tomorrow. And they never dream of it up there----"

She made a hopeless gesture:

"What is the use! When I came here from the Turkish Emba.s.sy, hearing that you were here but believing the information false, I discovered you conversing with a Russian spy--overheard her warn you to leave this house.

"And there, all the while, unknown to me, in the _salle de jeu_ were Curfoot and that unspeakable scoundrel Brandes! Why, the place was swarming with enemies--and I never dreamed it!... Yet--I might have feared some such thing--I might have feared that the man, Brandes, who had betrayed me once, would do it again if he ever had the chance....

And he's done it."

There was a long silence. Ilse stood staring at the melancholy greyish light on the window panes.

She said as though to herself:

"I shall never see another daybreak."... After a moment she turned and began to pace the attic, a strange, terrible figure of haggard youth in the shadowy light. "How horribly still it is at daybreak!" she breathed, halting before Neeland. "How deathly quiet----"

The dry crack of a pistol cut her short. Then, instantly, in the dim depths of the house, shot followed shot in bewildering succession, faster, faster, filling the place with a distracting tumult.

Neeland jerked up his pistol as a nearer volley rattled out on the landing directly underneath.

Sengoun, exasperated, shouted:

"Well, what the devil is all this!" and ran toward the head of the stairs, his pistol lifted for action.

Then, in the garret doorway, Weishelm appeared, his handsome face streaming blood. He staggered, turned mechanically toward the stairs again with wavering revolver; but a shot drove him blindly backward and another hurled him full length across the floor, where he lay with both arms spread out, and the last tremors, running from his feet to his twitching face.

CHAPTER x.x.xIII

A 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:

"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 and Sengoun 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 cafe!"

Curfoot immediately started downstairs; Brandes, pistol in hand, came slowly out of the club rooms, still leering, his slitted, greenish eyes almost phosph.o.r.escent in the semi-obscurity.

Suddenly he caught sight of Ilse Dumont standing close behind Sengoun and Neeland on the landing above.

"By G.o.d!" 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.