“Follow me! Seize the elevators! To Lembken! To the People’s House!”
The mob broke and dissolved, carrying me with it into the corridor. I saw the leader with the Assyrian beard heading the rush for the elevator shafts. He carried all with him. But the shafts were empty; the elevators had been drawn up. There followed howls of fury.
“Lembken!” shrieked the mob. “Out with him! Out with the defective!”
It was queer, that word; but one impulse animated all. They plunged after their leader, scrambling up the ironwork of the interior, and clinging there like flies as they worked their way upward. The little band of disciplined men alone stood still, and their chief turned to me with a wry look.
“We are too late,” he said. “Sanson has got his men together. We shall have to storm the Wing from below. Half our men have joined in that mad attack on Lembken, who is helpless, whereas Sanson—”
He shrugged his shoulders in despair. Then David turned to me.
“You must bring them back, Arnold,” he said. “They will obey and follow you. Leave Esther—”
He saw the look on my face, and began to plead with me. “It is your duty, Arnold,” he cried. “All will be lost unless you can draw off our men from the Palace. I will protect her with my life.” He bent down and looked into Esther’s face, and an expression of amazement came upon his own. It occurred to me afterward that he had never believed that Esther really lived. But at the time only the thought of this flickered through my brain, and it yielded to more urgent ones.
“They will follow you!” cried David.
I hesitated no longer. I placed Esther’s unconscious body in Elizabeth’s arms, and, without stopping to glance at her, lest it sap my resolution, I plunged into the shaft and began to scramble upward.