At that moment, he sat erect, listening. There had been a shot, which Kate had heard, but which she had hardly noticed; to her ears, it might have been a motor-car back-firing, or even a motor-boat.
Suddenly, a sharp little volley of shots.
Ramón rose swiftly, swift as a great cat, and slammed to the iron door at the top of the stairway, shooting the bars.
“Won’t you go into that room?” he said to her, pointing to a dark doorway. “You will be all right there. Just stay a few minutes till I come back.”
As he spoke, there came a shriek from the courtyard at the back, and a man’s death-voice yelled Patrón!
Ramón’s eyes dilated with terrible anger, the anger of death. His face went pale and strange, as he looked at her without seeing her, the black flame filling his eyes. He had drawn a long-barreled steel revolver from his hip.
Still without seeing her, he strode rapidly, soft and catlike along the terrace, and leaped up the end staircase on to the roof. The soft, eternal passion of anger in his limbs.
Kate stood in the doorway of the room, transfixed. The light of day seemed to have darkened before her face.
“Holá! You there!” she heard his voice from the roof, in such anger it was almost a laugh, from far away.
For answer, a confused noise from the courtyard, and several shots. The slow, steady answer of shots!