The Dark Star

“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, still leering, 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 the salle 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 Baba was 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 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 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?”

“You can,” 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 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.