Sidney strained his eyes to see into the gloom below, to discover, if possible, what was happening there. Failing in that he threw his blankets down on the ground and grasped the ladder to descend, fearing that harm had come to his brother. As he did so, one person instead of two came running along the darkness below, and the figure blundered into the wall at the end.
“Is that you, Ray?” Sidney whispered.
“Yes,” was the reply from below.
“There is a ladder, a little to your left,” he directed.
When Raymond had reached the angle of the alley, the man behind was so close that he believed he would be overtaken, especially as his breath, from the violent running uphill, was becoming very short. So he decided to resort to a trick. After running for a few feet along the level floor of the alley beyond the turn, he dropped to one knee and turned to face his pursuer, crouching closely to the ground. The fellow came on at full tilt and Raymond grasped him by one leg and rose with his burden. The impetus the man had acquired in running sent him hurtling through the air and he crashed, head first, against the wall. Stunned by the blow, he fell in a huddled heap.
Instead of running on after Sidney, as Raymond’s first impulse had been when his pursuer was placed hors de combat, with a sudden thought he stopped to examine his fallen antagonist. Something in the aspect of the man as he was flying over Raymond’s head had seemed familiar. He turned the form over to bring the face upward and, stooping, peered closely. It was just as he had suddenly suspected, the man was the English-speaking policeman. That meant that he probably had a revolver stuck in his belt, and Raymond immediately fumbled under the man’s coat. Pulling out the gun which he felt there, an instant’s examination, even in the dark, convinced him that it was indeed a .38 caliber. He wanted to whoop for joy that he once more had a serviceable weapon to fit the ammunition which they still possessed. It did not occur to him for a moment that in appropriating the revolver he was doing practically the same thing that the policeman had attempted when he coveted their money. The gun was so precisely what they needed that it only seemed as though a kind fortune had presented it to him.
As Raymond straightened up with the revolver in his hand the prostrate man raised himself to his elbow. The thick lamb’s wool cap which he wore, and which is the usual head-covering of men in the Caucasus, had so protected his head that the shock of being thrown against the wall had only slightly stunned him. Raymond was confronted with a new danger. With the man conscious, he would not be able to hide from him or to escape him in the end, though he might at first outdistance him in running.
The thought of a possible return to the filthy jail was more than Raymond could endure; he simply must prevent any danger of that. He had a savage, momentary impulse to shoot the man as he lay before him, but he could not bring himself to do that, and, anyway, it would make too much noise. There was one other way, and clubbing the pistol he brought it down with full force on the man’s head. The fellow sank back on the ground without a sound and lay without moving. Raymond sped on and in a moment came plump against the wall at the end, when Sidney hailed him, and he climbed the ladder.
“Where is that fellow who was chasing us?” asked Sidney in a whisper, when his brother appeared at the head of the ladder.
“I tripped him up and he’s down there in the alley,” replied Raymond in an equally low tone.