Well, you see, it came rather rough on a superior young optimist. For the very first time in his life, I suppose, Sutton found himself called to account without a chance either to smile or to sulk, to palter or to play at clever tricks. Whatever his share in the unhappy business had been—and we had never fully fathomed it, you remember—he was facing the result of that folly without the possibility of disguise or excuse or easy escape. Here was actual, physical hell to equal Wickwire's own preaching—the murky depth of it. And here was Wickwire himself, condemned to the dreariest fate ever devised by unamusing devils. And who to blame?...
What he suffered we had a guess even then. Being the sort of chap he was, he fought a very pretty little fight with himself in that moment—which we might have guessed as well. His face was gridironed, studded with sweat, and his hands clenched and opened. He turned here and there, seeking the careless word or the flippant gesture, some relief to an intolerable sense of guilt. But writhe as he liked, his darting glances always painfully returned to the still victim on the charpoy.
The Chinese touched his arm....
"No," he quavered. "No—no, by gum, no! It's not the end. Keep off of me!" Like a man who clears himself of a vileness, he slung Li Chwan across the room. "And you—" he cried to us "—hoist the chief up out of that, and lively. There's a way yet if we take the straight of it. Grab him!"
We responded—just as we had hesitated before—to some subtle quality behind the words, and while we were gathering the limp body Sutton himself was laying wide hold on the draperies across the wall. They ripped and swayed, swirled down about him so that he stood waist deep wrestling with figurative monsters until the whole blue screen tore away and revealed the glass partition which closed the end of the gallery. Solid at the base, it was latticed above with small panes, and, taking the straight way with a vengeance, he flung himself literally and bodily against it. The jingling crash brought a howl from the stairhead, but he broke a gap with his bleeding fists, wrenched out the crosspieces.... A spatter of warm rain blew in upon us.
"There's only the street below!" I gasped.
"Out!" was Sutton's crisp order. "Out—and through—and over with you!"
We had no choice; his furious energy drove us. Wickwire hung a dead weight in our arms, but we propped him on the jagged sill and scrambled after, any fashion. Clinging there, we had one last glimpse into the gallery behind us, set like a stage for our benefit.
We saw the little Chinese come on with uplifted knife, spitting and glaring like a wildcat, saw the knobbed, bare shoulders and coppery, brute faces of his crew, saw Sutton turning back. He had no weapon, but he armed himself. He dragged the big green joss from its niche, lamps, incense, and all, twirled it over his head, exultant, transformed with berserk fury, shouting some free battle cry of his own—and met them. Thereafter the place went dark in a babble of shrieks, and we dropped like slugs from a garden wall.
So we brought Chris Wickwire home again—what was left of him....