It did not take long. In a quarter of an hour's time, there was nothing left in the cellar but one body, that of Rosenthal, the spy.
And an imperious voice above commanded:
"Stay there, you others, and wait for us. And you, Karl, go down first."
Some one appeared on the top rungs of the ladder. Paul and Bernard were astounded at seeing a pair of red trousers, followed by a blue tunic and the full uniform of a French private. The man jumped to the ground and cried:
"I'm here, Excellenz. You can come now."
And they saw Laschen, the Belgian, or rather the self-styled Belgian who had given his name as Laschen and who belonged to Paul's section. They now knew where the three shots that had been fired at them came from. The traitor was there. Under the light they clearly distinguished his face, the face of a man of forty, with fat, heavy features and red-rimmed eyes. He seized the uprights of the ladder so as to hold it steady. An officer climbed down cautiously, wrapped in a wide gray cloak with upturned collar.
They recognized Major Hermann.
CHAPTER XII
MAJOR HERMANN
Resisting the surge of hatred that might have driven him to perform an immediate act of vengeance, Paul at once laid his hand on Bernard's arm to compel him to prudence. But he himself was filled with rage at the sight of that demon. The man who represented in his eyes every one of the crimes committed against his father and his wife, that man was there, in front of his revolver, and Paul must not budge! Nay more, circumstances had taken such a shape that, to a certainty, the man would go away in a few minutes, to commit other crimes, and there was no possibility of calling him to account.