"Look out!" exclaimed Laval. And Dennis raised his eyes just in time, for the cunning German had made a spring for the table, and already his unwounded hand had clutched the knife-handle. It was a huge thing, such as a butcher might use, and sharp as a razor.
"You will have it, will you?" said Dennis grimly, and he shot the man through the heart. "It has saved me the trouble of binding him, and that makes the third Boche I have accounted for this morning. By Jove, old chap! you've got it pretty badly. Whatever happens, I must stop that bleeding."
The knife with which the woman had cut the sleeve of the leather jacket had revealed a terrible jagged wound in the Frenchman's shoulder, from which the blood welled through his fingers as he grasped it; but Dennis, tearing some linen that the woman had brought into strips, improvised a couple of tourniquets, utilising the spindles of a chair which he smashed to pieces for the purpose, and to his intense satisfaction he found the hæmorrhage considerably reduced.
"Now, do you think you can walk?" he said anxiously. And Laval got up, reeling from the enormous quantity of blood he had lost.
"Half a mo!" said Dennis quickly. "This noose I had meant for Karl there will make a first-rate sling for that arm of yours. Another pull at the flask—that's good—and now we absolutely must make a move."
"One moment!" exclaimed Laval, pointing across the room. "There is a French flag yonder. Will you do me the goodness to tear it from the wall and bring it with you? I cannot leave that trophy in the hands of these hogs. Besides, it may be useful to us later on."
Dennis ran across the room and lifted the silk tricolour from the hooks on which it hung, reading as he did so an inscription in faded gold letters on the shot-riven folds.
Von Rudolfstein's father had captured that colour in the war of 1870 at the head of his Cuirassiers, and it had hung there ever since.
"Look at all that remains of my beloved decoration!" murmured Laval, pointing to the floor.
"They shall give you another for last night's work," said Dennis.