As I remarked once before, I think, the Chief was a good man to have on one’s side, but a bad opponent. He certainly looked dangerous enough at this moment, for his gray hair was streaked with blood from a scalp wound, his coat was torn and bloody in two places on the shoulders, where bullets had grazed him above the edge of the table, and his eyes blazed with energy and anger, while his mouth was a mere slit in a grim and formidable jaw.
I stepped over to him. “The gas!” I shouted. “Don’t let our men——”
Instantly he jumped for the corridor, blowing his whistle as he went. I followed at his heels.
But there was little need. We met the Chief’s forces returning, awe writ large on their faces. And down the hall beyond them, the open door into the room of the voices disclosed a number of our late enemies lying huddled on the floor of that deadly room in the same attitudes in which they had fallen as the gas overcame them. It seemed that the first one of our men who had followed them into the room to investigate, had been overcome by the gas himself and had been hauled out again by a couple of venturesome companions, holding their noses by way of a safeguard. By the time we reached him he had fully recovered again. For once the Emperor had played into our hands, it seemed.
As soon as the Chief had assured himself that the men in the room of the voices were not playing ’possum, he directed six or eight of his now numerous forces to dash into the room, haul out the enemy one by one and tie them up. That done he turned back to me again.
“Come on, Clayton, we’ll tackle that staircase now—and we’ll take a couple of others with us, while the rest of them finish cleaning up the place.”
He blew his whistle then, and the men, some of whom had scattered again, gathered around him. “Now, you men, finish the job and capture every one else you find alive, unless they put up a fight. We’ve broken the back of this business and there’s no need for any more bloodshed. Keep an eye out for prisoners too. They may have some of our friends still locked up here. I want a couple of you to join those fellows in the dining-room there and take those men into custody. Tie them up if necessary. And tell the girls that they can go and get dressed if they want to. Burke and Tallman, I want you to follow me. That’s all. The rest of you go to it.”
With that we started back across the hall again, followed by two of the Chief’s men, and made our way to the foot of the little staircase leading to the floor above. Looking up that little staircase, there was nothing but a velvety blackness to be seen, and I confess that the effect was not inviting.
However, we did not stop to talk about it, but, with the Chief and me in the lead, started up the stairs into the silence and darkness above. The men with us had torches, and they took these out and flashed them ahead of us, showing up the walls of a narrow corridor at the top of the staircase. As we mounted higher we could see that many closed doors led off this corridor, doors heavily built and with a certain forbidding quality, although the latter may have been only my imagination.
At any rate we passed into the corridor without incident, and the Chief set the two men with us to breaking down the doors as we came to them.