He stopped abashed before Paul’s pointing finger and stony face.
“Leave the room!” said Paul. “You forget yourself.”
Through the open door-way to which Paul pointed peered the ashen faces of other servants huddled together like sheep.
“Leave the room!” repeated Paul, and the man obeyed him, walking to the door unsteadily with quivering chin. On the threshold he paused. Paul stood pointing to the door. He had a poise of the head—some sudden awakening of the blood that had coursed in the veins of hereditary potentates. Maggie looked at him; she had never known him like this. She had known the man, she had never encountered the prince.
The big clock over the castle boomed out the hour, and at the same instant there arose a roar like the voice of the surf on a Malabar shore. There was a crashing of glass almost in the room itself. Already Steinmetz was drawing the curtains closer over the windows in order to prevent the light from filtering through the interstices of the closed shutters.
“Only stones,” he said to Paul, with his grim smile; “it might have been bullets.”
As if in corroboration of his suggestion the sharp ring of more than one fire-arm rang out above the dull roar of many voices.
Steinmetz crossed the room to where Etta was standing, white-lipped, by the fire. Her clenched hand was gripping Maggie’s wrist. She was half hidden behind her cousin. Maggie was looking at Paul. Etta was obviously conscious of Steinmetz’s gaze and approach.
“I asked you before to tell me all you knew,” he said. “You refused. Will you do it now?”
Etta met his glance for a moment, shrugged her shoulders, and turned her back on him. Paul was standing in the open door-way with his back turned toward them—alone. The palace had never looked so vast as it did at that moment—brilliantly lighted, gorgeous, empty.