“Out the front door’s the best,” said Alan, making for the hall. “She won’t hear you from inside.”
He unbolted the house door, pulled it open and ran down the steps. “You speak to her, Bob,” he called back as his cousin followed him. “My German is rather worse than yours.”
Though all was quiet in the square, an uneasy silence, and the crouching, watchful figures of infantrymen below and Spartacans above suggested that the firing might recommence at any moment. Bob ran to the woman’s side and touched her arm just as she started at last to cross the square.
“You need not go, Frau,” he said, close to her ear. “It’s no time for women to be out. Tell me where the police——” He paused, staring into her face, struck dumb with amazement.
“Mr. Bob!” The woman’s voice quivered. Her thin hands clasped the young officer’s arm in her overpowering excitement. “Oh, Mr. Bob—you here!”
She spoke in English and Bob abandoned his halting German, though now he hardly knew what he answered in the shock of his astonishment. “You—Elizabeth! Wait, you can’t go on. Come back into the house.”
“I say, she speaks English? She knows you?” demanded Alan, staring.
Bob had not time to reply before the machine guns on the opposite roofs, as though they had received a fresh supply of ammunition-belts, reopened fire. The silence of the square was rudely shattered. Put-put-put-put-a-put the machine guns hammered, and the rifles cracked in scattering shots sent by both rebels and loyalists. Cries resounded from neighboring windows, and from the Spartacan stronghold on the roofs came faint shouts of triumph.
Bob caught Elizabeth’s shoulder and pushed her toward the house door. “Go back! Hide!” he ordered. “We’ll run for it.”
The bullets were not yet falling dangerously near. Both Bob and Alan felt so unwilling to return to the Herr Councillor’s drawing-room for an indefinite wait that in silent agreement they began running along the street bordering the square, to the first corner, down which they turned.