The governor turned on Drexel in a fury. “So you have been trying to fool me!” he roared.
“I have done my best,” said Drexel.
“And this Schlusselburg business is just a plot to free these prisoners?”
“You are quite correct.”
“Then that prisoner was right!” ejaculated the governor. “Perhaps after all he is a spy, and there is to be an order for his release!”
“There is an order,” said the prince, “for I am here to bring it.”
“My God—and I all but set them free!” The governor blanched at his narrow escape. Then his fury blazed forth again. “Back you all four go to your cells!—and you two straight from your cell to your scaffold! And as for you, Captain Laroque”—he almost frothed in his revengeful rage—“you’ll never leave here to trick another man!”
He tore Drexel’s revolver from its holster, and with a quick stride toward his desk raised a hand above a bronze bell to sound the guard-summoning alarm. But though Drexel had thought all hope was gone, there was an instinct in him, deeper than consciousness, not to give up. He sprang desperately forward and caught the descending arm. At the same moment, as though this had been a signal, Razoff and Borodin seized Berloff in their manacled hands.
Like a flash Drexel’s other hand went for the governor’s throat to shut off the alarm from that, and he swung him out of reach of the bell. But the governor seized from the desk the big knife with which he had been making erasures and drove it into Drexel’s shoulder. He jerked it out and raised it for a second plunge. Drexel released the throat to check this nearer death. He seized the governor’s wrist, and in the same instant sent his fist into the governor’s great stomach; the wind rushed groaning out of his mouth and his arms fell to his sides. Drexel drove his fist fiercely into the bushy beard. The governor went reeling, and even as he fell Drexel drove his fist with terrific force a second time against his chin. The governor lay motionless.
Drexel whirled about for Berloff. For the minute of his struggle with the governor Borodin and Razoff had managed to hold the prince, but the handicap of manacles and anklets was too great, and the instant the governor fell the prince broke from their grasp. So when Drexel turned it was to find himself looking at the cold barrel of a pistol, and behind that the cold face of Berloff.