“Courage,” I stammered, looking back at her as we stumbled out into the torch-lit garden.
She smiled adorably. Her forefathers had mounted the guillotine smiling.
Mornac pointed to the garden wall near the bench where we had sat together. A soldier dressed like a Turco lifted a torch and set it in the flower-bed under the wall, illuminating the spot where we were to stand. As this soldier turned to come back I saw his face.
“Salah Ben-Ahmed!” I cried, hoarsely. “Do Marabouts do this butcher’s work?”
The Turco stared at me as though stunned.
“Salah Ben-Ahmed is a disgraced soldier!” I said, in a ringing voice.
“It’s a lie!” he shouted, in Arabic—“it’s a lie, O my inspector! Speak! Have these men tricked me? Are you not Prussians?”
“Silence! Silence!” bawled Mornac. “Turco, fall in! Fall in, I say! What! You menace me?” he snarled, cocking his revolver.
Then a man darted out of the red shadows of the 376 torch-light and fell upon Mornac with a knife, and dragged him down and rolled on him, stabbing him through and through, while the mutilated wretch screamed and screamed until his soul struggled out through the flame-shot darkness and fled to its last dreadful abode.
The Lizard rose, shaking his fagot knife; they fell upon him, clubbing and stabbing with stock and bayonet, but he swung his smeared and sticky blade, clearing a circle around him. And I think he could have cut his way free had not Tric-Trac shot him in the back of the head.