He was standing over an inert figure lying on the ground beside a half-opened door.
"Did you—"
"No, only belted him over the head with my pistol."
A woman's voice sounded inside the house, aggressively inquisitive.
"My God!" breathed Nikka. "She'll be out in a minute, and I can't hit her. We've got to try the street."
We stole through the courtyard to the street-door. Behind us Toutou's house was seething with activity. Somebody, apparently, had just gained the roof. The woman inside the house we had invaded became impatient, and a light showed. My fingers fumbled for the latch; it seemed to me I should never find it. The light wavered into the doorway, and a scream rose shrilly.
"Let me try," said Nikka. "Here it is!"
He pulled the door toward us very slowly, and we peered into the street. Not a figure showed in the direction of Tokalji's house. Ahead of us only a kerosene lantern burned in front of a coffee-shop on the corner where Sokaki Masyeri curved to the north. And the woman in the doorway of the house behind us was shrieking for dear life.
We sped out into the street, letting the door slam behind us. The noise distracted the attention of the woman from her unconscious husband, and she left him to run after us. We also made the mistake of taking the middle of the way instead of sticking to the shadows under the walls. And we had not gone fifty feet when we were seen by Gypsies on the roof of Tokalji's house, and they, with the woman to help them, cried the rest of the pack hot on our trail.
At the corner by the coffee-shop I looked back and counted six in a tapering string, with more emerging from the courtyard or climbing over the roofs. Luckily for us, however, there was a four-way crossing a hundred yards beyond the coffee-shop, and Nikka turned left, away from Pera, toward which they would expect us to head. We would have been safe then if we had not blundered into a Turkish gendarme. He was naturally suspicious of our haste, and blocked the narrow way; but I gave him a terrific punch in his fat stomach before he could pull his gun.