The Light That Lures

by Percy James Brebner

Neither the loud knocking, nor the command, brought any answer.

"Burst it open!" came a roar of voices.

It was a poor, common door, and splintered inwards almost at the first blow. A rush of feet crossed the threshold, officers, and dirty men and women, marking the floor, kicking aside rug and strip of carpet. A dainty apartment, white paint, white curtains over the windows and the bed, prints hanging on the walls, a faint fragrance in the air. She was here not long since. See the woman's things upon the table! There were her clothes upon the bed, a coarse dress; but these other garments! Look at them, citizens! Here's lace and fine linen! One hag, twisting her bony fingers into a garment, rent it in pieces, while a second, wrapping another garment round her dirty rags, began to dance to an accompaniment of ribald laughter. The aristocrat was here, and not long ago, but she had gone! The curtains were torn from the windows and from the bed, soiled in a moment and trampled on; the prints were wrenched from the walls; the bottles on the toilet table were hurled to the floor and broken; the furniture was shattered. The nest which had been so carefully prepared was quickly a heap of ruins.

With curses and blasphemy the crowd hurled itself down the stairs to the floor below. Here lived Deputy Latour, who had slunk into hiding. There may be papers in his room; if not, they can break it up as they have done the room above. Burst open this door too.

The officers knocked loudly. "Open, in the name of the Nation!"

It was a loud summons, no answer expected, yet at once the lock shot back and Raymond Latour stood in the doorway.

"What do you want with me, citizens?"

He had been waiting for the summons, was ready for it. His hands had tightened a little as he heard the wreckage of the room above. He knew that the woman was no longer there, he knew that with his capture they would forget all about her for a little while. The hours to-night would be precious to her. Two men loved her, and Richard Barrington was not the only man who was willing to die for her. So he faced the crowd upon the stairs which, after one yell of triumph, had fallen silent. This man had always been feared. No one knew his power for certain. He was feared now as he stood, calm and erect, in the doorway.

"What do you want, citizens, with Raymond Latour?"

Still a moment more of silence; then a fiendish yell, earsplitting, filling the whole house hideously, repeated by the crowd in the courtyard, finding an echo far down the Rue Valette.