"Straight is the narrow way," Eli Kirke oft cried out as he expounded Holy Writ.
Ah, well, if the narrow way is straight, it has a trick of becoming tangled in a most terrible snarl!
Wheeling the log-end right about, I sat down to await M. Picot. There was stirring in the next apartment. An ebon head poked past the door curtain, looked about, and withdrew without detecting me. The face I remembered at once. It was the wife of M. Picot's blackamoor. Only three men had passed from the cave. If the blackamoor were one, M. Picot and Le Borgne must be the others.
Footsteps grated on the pebbles outside. I rose with beating heart to meet M. Picot, who held my fate in his hands. Then a ringing pistol-shot set my pulse jumping.
I ran to the door. Something plunged heavily against the curtain. The robe ripped from the hangings. In the flood of moonlight a man pitched face forward to the cave floor. He reeled up with a cry of rage, caught blindly at the air, uttered a groan, fell back.
"M. Picot!"
Blanched and faint, the French doctor lay with a crimsoning pool wet under his head. "I am shot! What will become of her?" he groaned. "I am shot! It was Gillam! It was Gillam!"
Hortense and the negress came running from the inner cave. Le Borgne and the blackamoor dashed from the open with staring horror.
"Lift me up! For God's sake, air!" cried M. Picot.
We laid him on the pelts in the doorway, Le Borgne standing guard outside.