But the delay served to bring our pursuers close upon us; and they came running at top speed after us, making three yards to our one.
Again capture seemed inevitable. Then recalling the incident of earlier in the day at the house in the Place of St. John, I repeated it.
I fired my revolver in the air. “The police! The police!” I shouted. “A rescue! A rescue!”
It served us in good stead. The noise brought men and women rushing in alarm and curiosity from the houses on both sides of the alley, while many others ran in from the street beyond. Seeing our plight they cheered us and swarmed between Bremenhof’s party and us, blocking and hampering them so that we reached the end in safety.
The outlet to the alley was a narrow archway. Room was made for us to pass, and we gained the street while our pursuers were struggling and fighting to force their way through after us.
But again the respite seemed only to mock us.
We ran out only to find ourselves on the skirts of an ugly tumult. A short distance to our left down the street of St. Gregory, a fight was in progress between a considerable body of police and a crowd of strikers, and just as we emerged from the alley the police were getting the upper hand and the strikers were beginning to waver.
Some one raised the cry that a large body of police were coming through the alley, and the crowd, afraid of being caught between two fires, gave way and came streaming toward us followed by the police.
At that juncture Bremenhof and his men succeeded in reaching the street and joined the other police in a vigorous attack upon the crowd.
The situation was again critically perilous for us.