“Standstill!” commanded Ford. “He knows who YOU are! You heard that yell when they saw you? They know you are the prisoner, and they are glad you're still alive. That officer is aiming at the window BELOW us. He's after the men who murdered his mates.”
From the window directly beneath them came the crash of a rifle, and from the top of the ladder the revolver of the police officer blazed in the darkness. Again the rifle crashed, and the man on the ladder jerked his hands above his head and pitched backward. Ford looked into the face of the girl and found her eyes filled with horror.
“Where is my uncle, Pearsall?” she faltered. “He has two rifles—for shooting in Scotland. Was that a rifle that——” Her lips refused to finish the question.
“It was a rifle,” Ford stammered, “but probably Prothero——”
Even as he spoke the voice of the Jew rose in a shriek from the floor below them, but not from the window below them. The sound was from the front room opening on Sowell Street. In the awed silence that had suddenly fallen his shrieks carried sharply. They were more like the snarls and ravings of an animal than the outcries of a man.
“Take THAT!” he shouted, with a flood of oaths, “and THAT, and THAT!”
Each word was punctuated by the report of his automatic, and to the amazement of Ford, was instantly answered from Sowell Street by a scattered volley of rifle and pistol shots.
“This isn't a fight,” he cried, “it's a battle!”
With Miss Dale at his side, he ran into the front room, and, raising the blind, appeared at the window. And instantly, as at the other end of the house, there was, at sight of the woman's figure, a tumult of cries, a shout of warning, and a great roar of welcome. From beneath them a man ran into the deserted street, and in the glare of the gas-lamp Ford saw his white, upturned face. He was without a hat and his head was circled by a bandage. But Ford recognized Cuthbert. “That's Ford!” he cried, pointing. “And the girl's with him!” He turned to a group of men crouching in the doorway of the next house to the one in which Ford was imprisoned. “The girl's alive!” he shouted.
“The girl's alive!” The words were caught up and flung from window to window, from house-top to house-top, with savage, jubilant cheers. Ford pushed Miss Dale forward.