“For God’s sake, Eddie, shut your mouth,” he pleaded in English. “You can’t do that to her, whatever she done to you!” 386
But Brandes, disengaging himself with a jerk, pushed his way past Sengoun to where Ilse stood.
“I’ve got the goods on you!” he said in a ferocious voice that neither Stull nor Curfoot recognised. “You know what you did to me, don’t you! You took my wife from me! Yes, my wife! She was my wife! She is my wife!—For all you did, you lying, treacherous slut!—For all you’ve done to break me, double-cross me, ruin me, drive me out of every place I went! And now I’ve got you! I’ve sold you out! Get that? And you know what they’ll do to you, don’t you? Well, you’ll see when––”
Curfoot and Stull threw themselves against him, but Brandes, his round face pasty with fury, struggled back again to confront Ilse Dumont.
“Ruined me!” he repeated. “Took away from me the only thing God ever gave me for my own! Took my wife!”
“You dog!” said Ilse Dumont very slowly. “You dirty dog!”
A frightful spasm crossed Brandes’ features, and Stull snatched at the pistol he had whipped out. There was a struggle; Brandes wrenched the weapon free; but Neeland tore his way past Curfoot and struck Brandes in the face with the butt of his heavy revolver.
Instantly the group parted right and left; Sengoun suddenly twisted out of the clutches of the men who held him, sprang upon Curfoot, and jerked the pistol from his fist. At the same moment the entire front of the café gave way and the mob crashed inward with a roar amid the deafening din of shattered metal and the clash of splintering glass.
Through the dust and falling shower of débris, Brandes fired at Ilse Dumont, reeled about in the whirl of 387 the inrushing throng engulfing him, still firing blindly at the woman who had been his wife.
Neeland put a bullet into his pistol arm, and it fell. But Brandes stretched it out again with a supreme effort, pointing at Ilse Dumont with jewelled and bloody fingers: