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 that Neeland 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 in one 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, from 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 do that to her, whatever she done to you!”
But Brandes, disengaging himself with a jerk, pushed his way past Sengoun to where Ilse stood.
“I’ve got the goods on you!” 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, my wife! She was my wife! She is my 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 of the 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 i
n 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 out of 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!”
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-helmeted horsemen 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 an impasse.
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, fired twice more after the running man, 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 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 greasy casquet still 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 of cavalrymen 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 gave you a 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 little hand 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!”
Works of Robert W Chambers Page 836