Clearly his enemies were upon his heels. Marguerite saw him spring over the parapet on to the adjoining roof and a cloud of women assail him. Somehow he threw them off, somehow he dived and dodged between them, somehow he reached the further parapet, found a ladder propped against the outside wall, and slid down it on to a third housetop. And as he reached the flat terrace, yet another swarm of screaming termagants enveloped him. He was borne down to the floor of the room.
For a little while there was a wild tossing of arms, a confusion of bodies. It seemed to Marguerite as though all these women had suddenly melted into one fabulous monster. Then, with shrieks of joy and flutterings of scarves and handkerchiefs, they stood apart, dancing flatly on their feet. The officer for his part lay inert and for the best of reasons; he was bound hand and foot. . . . And shortly afterwards the women lighted a fire. . . .
“A fire?” said Marguerite, in a perplexity. “Why a fire?”
She watched—and then she heard the dreadful loud moan of a man in the extremity of pain. In a moment she was shaking Paul Ravenel by the shoulder, her face white and quivering, her eyes still looking out in horror upon a world incredible.
“Paul! Paul! Wake up!”
Ravenel came slowly out of a deep sleep, with a thought that once more the insurgents were about his door. But a few stammering words from Marguerite brought him quickly to his feet. He unlocked a cupboard and took from it a carbine in a canvas case. He slipped off the case and fitted a charged magazine beneath the breech.
“You will wait here, Marguerite.”
Whilst he was speaking he was already on the stair. Marguerite could not wait below as he had bidden her. This horror must end. She must know, of her own knowledge, that it had ended. She followed Paul as far as the mouth of the trap, and came to a stop there, her feet upon the stairs, her head just above the level of the roof. The groans of the tortured man floated across the open space mingled with the triumphant screams of the women.
“Oh, hurry, Paul, hurry,” she cried, and she heard him swear horribly.
The oath meant less than nothing to her. Would he never fire? He was kneeling behind the parapet, crouching a little so that not a flutter of his haik should be visible, with the barrel of his carbine resting upon the bricks. Why didn’t he fire? She stamped upon the stairs in a frenzy of impatience. She could not see that the women were perpetually shifting and crossing about their victim and obscuring him from Paul Ravenel.