The good Sauvinoux had propped up a small hand mirror on the top of the desk, and he did not stir. He began to strip off, slowly, his disguise. He had even set the revolver with which he had been threatening Bregeac down on the desk beside him.
Marescal sprang forward, snatched up the weapon, and sprang back, with both revolvers leveled.
“Hands up, or I fire! D’you hear, you crook!” he howled again.
The crook took no more notice of him. Under the [[219]]leveled revolvers a few feet away from him, he removed the hair which formed mutton-chop whiskers on his cheeks, and gave his eyebrows an unwonted thickness.
“I’ll fire! I’ll fire! D’you hear, you scoundrel? I’ll count three and fire! One—two—three!”
“You’re going to make a fool of yourself, Rudolph,” murmured Sauvinoux.
Rudolph made a fool of himself. He had lost his head. He let fly with both weapons, at random, at the pier-glass, the walls, the pictures, like a murderer drunk with the smell of blood who plunges his knife again and again into the corpse of his panting victim. Bregeac crouched before the storm of bullets. Aurelie did not risk a movement. Since her savior did not try to save her, since he let it happen, it must be that there was nothing to fear. Her confidence in him was so complete that she almost smiled. With his handkerchief and some Vaseline Sauvinoux removed the grease-paint from his face. Little by little Ralph appeared.
Twelve reports had banged out. The room was full of smoke; mirrors were smashed; there were holes in the walls, broken picture-frames, ruined pictures. It looked as if it had been taken by storm.
Marescal stood dazed; a sudden shame at his fit of madness overwhelmed him. He pulled himself together and said faintly to his men:
“Wait on the staircase. Come the moment I call.” [[220]]