Neeland looked across the street where, under a gas lamp on a rusty iron bracket, was pasted the order for general mobilisation. And on the sidewalk at the base of the wall lay a man, face downward, his dusty shoes crossed under the wide flaring trousers, the greasy casquet still crowding out his lop ears; his hand clenched beside a stiletto which lay on the stone flagging beside him.
“An apache,” said Sengoun coolly. “That’s right, too. It’s the way we do in Russia when we clean house for war––”
His face reddened and lighted joyously.
“Thank God for my thousand lances!” he said, lifting his eyes to the yellowing sky between the houses in the narrow street. “Thank God! Thank God!”
Now, across the intersections of streets and alleys beyond where they stood, policemen and Garde cavalry were shooting into doorways, basements, and up the sombre, dusky lanes, the dry crack of their service revolvers re-echoing noisily through the street.
Toward the Boulevard below, a line of police and of 392 cavalrymen blocked the rue Vilna; and, beyond them, the last of the mob was being driven from the Café des Bulgars, where the first ambulances were arriving and the police, guarding the ruins, were already looking out of windows on the upper floors.
A cavalryman came clattering down the rue Vilna, gesticulating and calling out to Sengoun and Neeland to take their ladies and depart.
“Get us a taxicab—there’s a good fellow!” cried Sengoun in high spirits; and the cavalryman, looking at their dishevelled attire, laughed and nodded as he rode ahead of them down the rue Vilna.
There were several taxicabs on the Boulevard, their drivers staring up at the wrecked café. As Neeland spoke to the driver of one of the cabs, Ilse Dumont stepped back beside the silent girl whom she had locked in the bedroom.
“I gave you a chance,” she said under her breath. “What may I expect from you? Answer me quickly!—What am I to expect?”