CHAPTER XXXIII
A RAT HUNT
The interior of the entire house was now in an uproar; shots came fastfrom every landing; the semi-dusk of stair-well and corridor waslighted by incessant pistol flashes and the whole building echoed thedeafening racket.
"What do you make of it?" shouted Sengoun furiously, standing like abaited and perplexed bull. "Who's fighting who in this fool of aplace? By Erlik! I'd like to know whom I'm to fire at!"
Ilse Dumont, creeping along the wall, looked fearfully down atWeishelm who no longer moved where he lay on the dusty floor, witheyes and mouth open and his distorted face already half covered by awet and crawling scarlet mask.
"Brandes and Stull are betraying us," she whispered. "They are killingmy comrades--on the stairs down there----"
"If that is true," called out Neeland in a low, cautious voice, "you'dbetter 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! Nowis the time to shoot our way out of this. Come on, Neeland! Hurrah forthe 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, draggingher with him after Sengoun, who had already reached the head of thestairs 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 theminstantly, driving them back from the head of the staircase flatagainst the corridor wall. But Golden Beard, seeming to realise nowthat 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 Babafollowing, their restless, upward-pointed pistols searching for theslightest movement in the semi-obscurity of the hallway above.
Sengoun, fuming and fretting, had begun to creep toward the head ofthe stairs again, when there came a rattling hail of shots from below,a rush, the trample of feet, the crash of furniture and startling slamof a door.
Downstairs straight toward the uproar ran Sengoun with Neeland besidehim. The halls were swimming in acrid fumes; the floors trembled andshook under the shock as a struggling, fighting knot of men wenttumbling down the stairway below, reached the landing and burst intothe rooms of the Cercle Extranationale.
Leaning over the banisters, Neeland saw Golden Beard turn on DocCurfoot, raging, magnificent as a Viking, his blue eyes ablaze. Hehurled his empty pistol at the American; seized chairs, bronzes,andirons, the clock from the mantel, and sent a storm of heavymissiles through the doorway among the knot of men who were pressinghim 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 leftpalm, his weapon level, swerving as his quarry moved, he presentlyfired at Golden Beard and got him through the back. And then he shothim again deliberately, through the body, as the giant turned, made amenacing gesture toward him; took an uncertain step in his direction;another step, wavering, blindly grotesque; then stood swaying thereunder the glare of the partly shattered chandelier from which hunglong 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 magnificenthead.
The bronze Barye lion dropped from Golden Beard's nerveless fist; thetowering figure, stiffening, fell over rather slowly and lay acrossthe velvet carpet as rigid as a great tree.
Brandes went into the room, leaned over the dying man and fired intohis body until his pistol was empty. Then he replaced the exhaustedclip leisurely, leering down at his victim.
There was a horrid sound from the stairs, where Curfoot and anotherman were killing a waiter. Strange, sinister faces appeared everywherefrom the smoke-filled club rooms; Stull came out into the hallwaybelow and shouted up through the stair-well:
"Say, Eddie! For Christ's sake come down here! There's a mob outsideon the street and they're tearing the iron shutters off the cafe!"
Curfoot immediately started downstairs; Brandes, pistol in hand, cameslowly out of the club rooms, still leering, his slitted, greenisheyes almost phosphorescent in the semi-obscurity.
Suddenly he caught sight of Ilse Dumont standing close behind Sengounand 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 butwent plunging downstairs into the smoky obscurity below.
"Come on!" roared Sengoun to Neeland, starting forward with levelledweapon. "They've all gone crazy and it's time we were getting out ofthis!"
"Quick!" whispered Neeland to Ilse Dumont. "Follow me downstairs! It'sthe only chance for you now!"
But the passageway was blocked by a struggling, cursing, pantingcrowd, and they were obliged to retreat into the club rooms.
In the _salle de jeu_, Ali Baba, held fast by three men dressed aswaiters, suddenly tripped up two of them, turned, and leaped for thedoorway. The two men who had been tripped scrambled to their feet andtore 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 thelanding above; and the dim corridor rang with the frightful screamingof a woman.
"It's--that--that--Russian girl!" stammered Ilse Dumont; "--The girl Ilocked in! Oh, my God!--my God! Karl Breslau is killing her!"
Neeland sprang into the hall and leaped up the stairs; but the threemen disguised as waiters had arrived before him.
And there, across the threshold of the bedroom, backed up flat againstthe shattered door, Ali Baba was already fighting for his life; andthe frightened Russian girl crept out from the bedroom behind him andran to Neeland for protection.
Twice Neeland aimed at Ali Baba, but could not bring himself to fireat the bleeding, rabid object which snarled and slavered and bit andkicked, regardless of the blows raining on him. At last one of hisassailants broke the half demented creature's arm with a chair; andthe bloody, battered thing squeaked like a crippled rat and dartedaway amid the storm of blows descending, limping and floundering upthe attic stairs, his broken arm flapping with every gasping bound.
After him staggered his sweating and exhausted assailants, reelingpast Neeland and Ilse Dumont and the terrified Russian girl whocrouched behind them. But, halfway up the stairs all three halted andstood clinging to the banisters as though listening to something onthe floor above them.
Neeland heard it, too: from the roof came a ripping, splinteringsound, as though people on the slates were prying up the boltedscuttle. The three men on the stairs hesitated a moment longer; thenturned to flee, too late; a hail of pistol shots swept the atticstairs; all three men came pitching and tumbling down to the landing.
Two of them lay still; one rose immediately and limped on again downthe 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 hestood there at the head of the further 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 Breslaurat alive, but we can't do it now, and there's like to be a 'orridmess 'ere directly."
"Can we get through below?"
"_You_ can," said the man significantly, "but they'll be detaining oneo' 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 agentstood. 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 oniron shutters. A deeper, more sinister roar rose from the mob outside.There was a struggle going on inside the building, too; Neeland couldhear the trampling and surging of men on every floor--voices callingfrom room to room, shouts of anger, the terrible outcry of a man inagony.
"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 onthe roof we've bagged 'em all."
The Russian girl was trembling so violently that Neeland took her bythe arm. But Ilse Dumont, giving her a glance of contempt, movedcalmly 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 nextfloor:
"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 fewmoments!"
Somebody else shouted up from the tumult below:
"It's war, 'Arry! 'Ave you 'eard? It's war this morning! Them 'Uns 'asdeclared war! And the perlice is a-killin' of the Apaches all overParis!"
Ilse Dumont looked curiously at the agent, calmly at Neeland, then,dropping one hand on the banisters, she went lightly down the stairstoward the uproar below, followed by Neeland and the Russian girlclinging to his arm with both desperate little hands.
The British agent hung far over the banisters until he saw hiscolleague join them on the floor below; then, reassured, and on guardagain, he leaned back against the corridor wall, his pistol resting onhis thigh, and fixed his cold grey eyes on the attic stairs oncemore.
The secret agent who now joined Neeland and Ilse Dumont on the fourthfloor had evidently been constructing a barricade across the hallwayas 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 redhair and in the garb of a waiter--clambered over it, revolver in onehand, a pair of handcuffs in the other. He lost his balance on top ofthe shaky heap; strove desperately to recover it, scrambled like a catin a tub, stumbled, rolled over on a mattress.
And there Neeland pinned him, closing his mouth with one hand and histhroat with the other, while Ilse Dumont tore weapon and handcuffsfrom his grasp, snapped the latter over his wrists, snatched the casefrom a bedroom pillow lying among the mattresses, and, with Neeland'said, swathed the struggling man's head in it.
"Into that clothes-press!" whispered Ilse, pointing along the hallwaywhere a door swung open.
"Help me lift him!" motioned Neeland.
Together they got him clear of the shaky barricade and, lugging himbetween them, deposited him on the floor of the clothes-press andlocked the door.
So silent had they been that, listening, they heard no movement fromthe 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 thoughher limbs scarcely supported her. Neeland passed his arm under hers,nodded to Ilse Dumont, and started cautiously down the carpetedstairs, his automatic pistol in one hand, and the revolver taken fromthe imprisoned secret agent clutched tightly in the other.
Down the stairs they crept, straight toward the frightful tumult stillraging below--down past the wrecked club rooms; past a dead mansprawling on the landing across the blood-soaked carpet--down into thedepths of the dusky building toward the lighted cafe floor whence camethe uproar of excited men, while, from the street outside, rose thefrantic yelling of the mob mingled with the crash of glass and theclanging dissonance of iron grilles and shutters which were beingbattered into fragments.
"It's my chance, now!" whispered Ilse Dumont, slipping past him like ashadow.
For a moment he saw her silhouetted against the yellow electric glareon the stairs below, then, half carrying the almost helpless Russiangirl, he stumbled down the last flight of stairs and pushed his waythrough a hurrying group of men who seemed to be searching forsomething, for they were tearing open cupboards and buffets, draggingout table drawers and tumbling linen, crockery, and glassware all overthe 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 cafe, looked around forSengoun, and saw him almost immediately.
The young Russian, flushed, infuriated, his collar gone and his coatin tatters, was struggling with some men who held both his arms butdid not offer to strike him.
Behind him, crowded back into a corner near the cashier'ssteel-grilled desk, stood Ilse Dumont, calm, disdainful, confronted byBrandes, whose swollen, greenish eyes, injected with blood, glaredredly 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. "Youcan't do _that_ to her, whatever she done to you!"
But Brandes, disengaging himself with a jerk, pushed his way pastSengoun to where Ilse stood.
"I've got the goods on _you_!" he said in a ferocious voice thatneither Stull nor Curfoot recognised. "You know what you did to me,don't you! You took my wife from me! Yes, my _wife_! She _was_ mywife! She _is_ my wife!--For all you did, you lying, treacherousslut!--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 soldyou 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 roundface pasty with fury, struggled back again to confront Ilse Dumont.
"Ruined me!" he repeated. "Took away from me the only thing God evergave 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 thepistol he had whipped out. There was a struggle; Brandes wrenched theweapon free; but Neeland tore his way past Curfoot and struck Brandesin the face with the butt of his heavy revolver.
Instantly the group parted right and left; Sengoun suddenly twistedout of the clutches of the men who held him, sprang upon Curfoot, andjerked the pistol from his fist. At the same moment the entire frontof the cafe gave way and the mob crashed inward with a roar amid thedeafening din of shattered metal and the clash of splintering glass.
Through the dust and falling shower of debris, Brandes fired at IlseDumont, reeled about in the whirl of the inrushing throng engulfinghim, still firing blindly at the woman who had been his wife.
Neeland put a bullet into his pistol arm, and it fell. But Brandesstretched it out again with a supreme effort, pointing at Ilse Dumontwith jewelled and bloody fingers:
"That woman is a German spy! A spy!" he screamed. "You damn Frenchmutts, do you understand what I say! Oh, my God! Will someone whospeaks French tell them! Will somebody tell them she's a spy! _Lafemme! Cette femme!_" he shrieked. "_Elle est espion! Esp----!_" Hefired again, with his left hand. Then Sengoun shot him through thehead; and at the same moment somebody stabbed Curfoot in the neck; andthe lank American gambler turned and cried out to Stull in a voicehalf strangled with pain and fury:
"Look out, Ben. There are apaches in this mob! That one in the stripedjersey knifed me----"
"_Ti
ens, v'la pour toi, sale mec de malheur!_" muttered a voice at hiselbow, 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 deadweight bore Stull to his knees among the fierce apaches.
And there, fighting in silence to the end, his chalky face of a sickclown meeting undaunted the overwhelming odds against him, Stull wasset upon by the apaches and stabbed and stabbed until his clothing wasa heap of ribbons and the watch and packet of French bank-notes whichthe assassins tore from his body were dripping with his blood.
Sengoun and Neeland, their evening clothes in tatters, hatless,dishevelled, began shooting their way out of the hell of murder anddestruction raging around them.
Behind them crept Ilse Dumont and the Russian girl: dust and smokeobscured the place where the mob raged from floor to floor in a frenzyof destruction, tearing out fixtures, telephones, window-sashes,smashing tables, bar fixtures, mirrors, ripping the curtains from thewindows and the very carpets from the floor in their overwhelming rageagainst this German cafe.
That apaches had entered with them the mob cared nothing; the red lustof destruction blinded them to everything except their terriblenecessity for the annihilation of this place.
If they saw murder done, and robbery--if they heard shots in thetumult and saw pistol flashes through the dust and grey light ofdaybreak, they never turned from their raging work.
Out of the frightful turmoil stormed Neeland and Sengoun, theirpistols spitting flame, the two women clinging to their raggedsleeves. Twice the apaches barred their way with bared knives,crouching for a rush; but Sengoun fired into them and Neeland'sbullets dropped the ruffian in the striped jersey where he stood overStull's twitching body; and the sinister creatures leaped back fromthe levelled weapons, turned, and ran.
Through the gaping doorway sprang Sengoun, his empty pistol menacingthe crowd that choked the shadowy street; Neeland flung away hispistol and turned his revolver on those in the cafe behind him, asIlse Dumont and the Russian girl crept through and out into thestreet.
The crowd was cheering and shouting:
"Down with the Germans! To the Brasserie Schwarz!"
An immense wave of people surged suddenly across the rue Vilna, headedtoward the German cafes on the Boulevard; and then, for the firsttime, Neeland caught sight of policemen standing in little groups,coolly watching the destruction of the Cafe des Bulgars.
Either they were too few to cope with the mob, or they wereindifferent as to what was being done to a German cafe, but one thingwas plain; the police had not the faintest idea that murder had beenrampant in the place. For, when suddenly a dead body was thrown fromthe door out on the sidewalk, their police whistles shrilled throughthe 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 awarethat German cafes were being attacked and wrecked. A mounted inspectorforced his horse along the swarming sidewalk, crying:
"_Allons! Circulez! C'est defendu de s'attrouper dans la rue! Maisfichez-moi le camp, nom de Dieu! Les Allemands ne sont pas encore dansla place!_"
Along the street and on the Boulevard mobs were forming and alreadystorming three other German cafes; a squadron of Republican Guardcavalry arrived at a trot, their helmets glittering in the increasingdaylight, driving before them a mob which had begun to attack a cafeon the corner.
A captain, superbly mounted, rode ahead of the advancing line ofhorses, warning the throng back into the rue Vilna, up which the mobnow recoiled, sullenly protesting.
Neeland and Sengoun and the two women were forced back with the crowdas a double rank of steel-helmeted horsemen advanced, sweepingeverybody into the rue Vilna.
Up the street, through the vague morning light, they retired betweenranks of closed and silent houses, past narrow, evil-looking streetsand stony alleys still dark with the shadows of the night.
Into one of these Neeland started with Ilse Dumont, but Sengoun drewhim back with a sharp exclamation of warning. At the same time thecrowd all around them became aware of what was going on in the maze ofdusky lanes and alleys past which they were being driven by thecavalry; and the people broke and scattered like rabbits, dartingthrough the cavalry, dodging, scuttling under the very legs of thehorses.
The troop, thrown into disorder, tried to check the panic-strickenflight; a brigadier, spurring forward to learn the cause of thehysterical stampede, drew bridle sharply, then whipped his pistol outof the saddle-holster, and galloped into an _impasse_.
The troop captain, pushing his horse, caught sight of Sengoun andNeeland in the remains of their evening dress; and he glancedcuriously at them, and at the two young women clad in the rags ofevening gowns.
"_Nom de Dieu!_" he cried. "What are such people as you doing here? Goback! This is no quarter for honest folk!"
"What are those police doing in the alleys?" demanded Sengoun; but thecaptain cantered his horse up the street, pistol lifted; and they sawhim fire from his saddle at a man who darted out of an alley and whostarted to run across the street.
The captain missed every shot, but a trooper, whose horse had come upon the sidewalk beside Neeland, fired twice more after the runningman, and dropped him at the second shot.
"A good business, too," he said calmly, winking at Neeland. "You_bourgeois_ ought to be glad that we're ordered to clean up Paris foryou. 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 haveorders to kill them where they find them! Look!" he added, pointing tothe dead wall across the street; "It's here at last, and Paris iscleaning house and getting ready for it! This is war, Neeland--war atlast!"
Neeland looked across the street where, under a gas lamp on a rustyiron bracket, was pasted the order for general mobilisation. And onthe sidewalk at the base of the wall lay a man, face downward, hisdusty shoes crossed under the wide flaring trousers, the greasy_casquet_ still crowding out his lop ears; his hand clenched beside astiletto which lay on the stone flagging beside him.
"An apache," said Sengoun coolly. "That's right, too. It's the way wedo 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 theyellowing sky between the houses in the narrow street. "Thank God!Thank God!"
Now, across the intersections of streets and alleys beyond where theystood, policemen and Garde cavalry were shooting into doorways,basements, and up the sombre, dusky lanes, the dry crack of theirservice revolvers re-echoing noisily through the street.
Toward the Boulevard below, a line of police and of cavalrymenblocked the rue Vilna; and, beyond them, the last of the mob was beingdriven from the Cafe des Bulgars, where the first ambulances werearriving and the police, guarding the ruins, were already looking outof windows on the upper floors.
A cavalryman came clattering down the rue Vilna, gesticulating andcalling out to Sengoun and Neeland to take their ladies and depart.
"Get us a taxicab--there's a good fellow!" cried Sengoun in highspirits; 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 upat the wrecked cafe. As Neeland spoke to the driver of one of thecabs, Ilse Dumont stepped back beside the silent girl whom she hadlocked in the bedroom.
"I gave _you_ a chance," she said under her breath. "What may I expectfrom you? Answer me quickly!--What am I to expect?"
The girl seemed dazed:
"N-nothing," she stammered. "The--the horror of that place--thekilling--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'venever before seen death--never seen how it came--how men die!This--this killing is horrible, revolting!" She had laid one tremblinglittle hand on Ilse Dumont's bare shoulder. "I don't want to have youkilled; the idea of death makes me ill! I'm going home--that is all Iask for--to go home----"
She dropped her pretty head and began to sob hysterically, standingthere under the growing daylight of the Boulevard, in her tatteredevening gown.
Suddenly Ilse Dumont threw both arms around her and kissed thefeverish, tear-wet face:
"You weren't meant for this!" she whispered. "You do it for money. Gohome. Do anything else for wages--anything except this!--_Anything_, Itell 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 youasked me! Besides, I can talk to her about my regiment on the way.That will be wonderful, Neeland! That will be quite wonderful! I cantalk to her in Russian about my regiment all the way home!"
He laughed and looked at his friend, at Ilse Dumont, at the droopingfigure he was to take under his escort. He glanced down at his ownragged attire where he stood hatless, collarless, one sleeve of hisevening coat ripped open to the shoulder.
"Isn't it wonderful!" he cried, bursting out into uncontrollablelaughter. "Neeland, my dear comrade, this has been the mostdelightfully wonderful night of my entire life! But the great miracleis still to come! Hurrah for a thousand lances! Hurrah! Town taken byPrince Erlik! Hurrah!"
And he seized the young girl whom he was to escort to herhome--wherever that hazy locality might be--and carried her in hisarms to the taxicab, amid encouraging shouts of laughter from the lineof cavalrymen who had been watching the proceedings from the corner ofthe rue Vilna.
That shout of Gallic appreciation inflamed Sengoun: he reached for hishat, to lift and wave it, but found no hat on his head. So he wavedhis tattered sleeve instead:
"Hurrah for France!" he shouted. "Hurrah for Russia! I'm Sengoun, ofthe Terek!--And I am to have a thousand lances with which to explainto the Germans my opinion of them and of their Emperor!"
The troopers cheered him from their stirrups, in spite of theirofficers, who pretended to check their men.
"_Vive la France! Vive la Russie!_" they roared. "Forward the TerekCossacks!"
Sengoun turned to Ilse Dumont:
"Madame," he said, "in gratitude and admiration!"--and he gracefullysaluted her hand. Then, to his comrade: "Neeland!"--seizing both theAmerican's hands. "Such a night and such a comrade I shall neverforget! I adore our night together; I love you as a brother. I shallsee you before I go?"
"Surely, Sengoun, my dear comrade!"
"_Alors--au revoir!_" He sprang into the taxicab. "To the RussianEmbassy!" he called out; and turned to the half fainting girl on theseat beside him.
"Where do you live, my dear?" he asked very gently, taking her icyhand in his.
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