"Maître Jacques!"
He looked up, gaping at this voice out of the sky, but, despite his amazement, I saw that he knew me.
"Maître Jacques! We're being murdered! We can't get out! Help us for the love of Christ! Bring a plank, a rope, to the window there!"
For an instant he stood confounded. Then he vanished into the inn.
I waited, on fire. Still from the next room sounded the clash of steel. White shirt and black doublet passed the door in turn, unflagging, ungaining.
Suddenly came a new noise from the passage, of trampling and rending, blows and oaths. My first thought was that they were fighting out there, that rescuers had come. Then, as I listened, I learned better. Despairing of kicking down the door, they were tearing out a piece of stair-rail for a battering-ram. It would not long stand against that.
I ran back to the window. No Jacques appeared. We were lost, lost!
Hark, from the next room a cry, a fall! Well, were it Lucas's victory, he might kill me as well as another. I walked into the back room. But it was Lucas who lay prone.
"Come, come!" I cried, clutching monsieur's wrist. But he would not till with Lucas's own misericorde he had given him coup de grâce.
Crash! Crash! The upper panel shivered in twain. A great splinter six inches wide, hanging from the top, blocked the opening. A hand came through to wrench it away.