“I never saw either of them,” he said; “but they look the part—you hit this one exactly on the spot; he is paralyzed or dead.”
“We will leave him to find out for himself which it is,” the Archduke answered—“unless, Colonel, you wish to search further for the lady—as I remember, you promised her the first killing.”
Bernheim laughed.
“I rather imagine your lady is a man—I think we shall find her at the foot of the stairs.”
He ran quickly down, vaulted over the débris with the aid of the rail, and turned on the light.
The Archduke had followed him as far as the turn.
“It looks as though you got her, Colonel,” he remarked, pointing with his rapier to two men who lay among the fragments of the chest. One was dead—face and head mashed flat, the crimson splotch on the white wall marking where the heavy missile had crushed them. The other, both legs broken at the ankles, and half his ribs driven in, was pinned in the corner, unconscious—a singularly repulsive creature, with huge, protruding teeth, pimply face, an enormous red nose, and a mouth like a fish’s.
Bernheim looked him over.
“Positively, I’d be ashamed to employ such carrion,” he remarked. “I don’t understand Lotzen; he is an aesthete, even in his crimes.”
The Archduke stepped carefully into the hall, and laid his rapier on the table.