“Send her along!” bawled the man, framing his face with both hands. “Keep Breslau on the roof a bit and we’ll ’ave the beggar in a few moments!”
Somebody else shouted up from the tumult below:
“It’s war, ’Arry! ’Ave you ’eard? It’s war this morning! Them ’Uns ’as declared war! And the perlice is a-killin’ of the Apaches all over Paris!”
Ilse Dumont looked curiously at the agent, calmly at Neeland, then, dropping one hand on the banisters, she went lightly down the stairs toward the uproar below, followed by Neeland and the Russian girl clinging to his arm with both desperate little hands.
The British agent hung far over the banisters until he saw his colleague join them on the floor below; then, reassured, and on guard again, he leaned back against the corridor wall, his pistol resting on his thigh, and fixed his cold grey eyes on the attic stairs once more.
The secret agent who now joined Neeland and Ilse Dumont on the fourth floor had evidently been constructing a barricade across the hallway as a precaution in case of a rush from the Germans on the roof.
Chairs and mattresses, piled shoulder high, obstructed the passageway, blocking the stairs; and the secret agent—a very young man with red hair and in the garb of a waiter—clambered over it, revolver in 384 one hand, a pair of handcuffs in the other. He lost his balance on top of the shaky heap; strove desperately to recover it, scrambled like a cat in a tub, stumbled, rolled over on a mattress.
And there Neeland pinned him, closing his mouth with one hand and his throat with the other, while Ilse Dumont tore weapon and handcuffs from his grasp, snapped the latter over his wrists, snatched the case from a bedroom pillow lying among the mattresses, and, with Neeland’s aid, swathed the struggling man’s head in it.
“Into that clothes-press!” whispered Ilse, pointing along the hallway where a door swung open.
“Help me lift him!” motioned Neeland.