"Yes; but we'll get on faster, all the same! I'll help you! Come!"
I put my arm firmly about her waist and almost lifted her along with me. By the time we had reached the Pont Royal, the high-explosive bursts were directly over us; the air rocked with them. I detected, too, at intervals, another more ominous sound—that deep, pulsing growl which no one having once heard it could ever mistake.
"Gothas," I growled back at them, "flying low. They've ducked under the guns!"
And instantly I swung Susan across the open quai to the left and plunged with her up an inky defile, the Rue du Bac.
"Where are you taking me?" she demanded, half breathless, dragging against my arm.
"To the first available abri," I cried at her, under the sky's reckless tumult. "Don't stop to argue about it!"
But she halted me right by the corner of the Rue de Lille. "If it's going to be a bad raid, Ambo, I must get to Jimmy's baby—I must!"
"Impossible! It's at least two miles—and this isn't going to be a picnic, Susan! You're coming with me!" I tightened my arm about her; every instant now I expected the shattering climax of the bombs.
Then, just as we crossed the Rue de Lille, something halted me in my turn. About a hundred yards at my right, down toward the Gare D'Orsay, and from the very middle of the black street-chasm, a keen, bladelike ray of light flashed once and again—sharp, vertical rapier-thrusts—straight up through the thin mist-veil into the treacherous sky. Followed, doubtless from a darkened upper window, a woman's frantic shriek: "Espion—espion!"
Pistol shots next—and rough cries—and a pounding charge of feet. . . . Right into my arms he floundered, and I tackled him and fell with him to the cobbles and fought him there blindly, feeling for his throat. This lasted but a moment. Gendarmes tore us apart, in a brief crossing flash of electric-torches—and I caught just one glimpse of a bare bullet-head, of a bloated, discolored face, of prominent staring eyes, maddened by fear. There could be no mistake. It was our little man of the Pantagruelian banquet. We had watched him eating his last fabulous meal—his farewell to Egypt.