The gamblers and croupiers, still massed struggling round the exit, turned, many of them as though by an understanding, and faced us, some of them even crying “Silence!” “Silence!” The valets, clambering on the side seats, leaned towards us expectantly. It seemed as though they were looking for us to make them a speech, some kind of an apology for our inexplicable and outrageous conduct. It was a sort of “Gentlemen of the French Guard, fire first!” and though I don’t suppose it lasted more than a second, it seemed an age.
Then Brentin stepped forward, and sweeping his revolver along the line of their expectant faces, said in his ordinary voice—and all the more authoritative and effective it sounded—“Retirez-vous!”
My gaze was fixed on a tall croupier, a man I had often seen walking about in a straw-hat with his little daughter; indeed, once I had stopped and kissed the child, she was so pretty. Then he had been delighted; now he was staring at me with hard, frightened eyes, grinding his teeth.
As Brentin stepped forward, we stepped forward too.
“Close up behind us, you men!” Masters called to the sailors. “Use your fists if they try to stop you!”
Instantly the screaming and shouting began again. As we moved briskly and irresistibly forward, the seething crowd at the swing-doors melted away before us like wax before the fire. Men and women began to steal behind us and run back frantically into the vacant rooms we had just stripped and left.
“Retirez-vous!” cried Brentin, in a higher key.
I kept my eye on the tall croupier, clearly meditating mischief, and then suddenly covered him with my unloaded revolver. His face fell like a shutter; all at once he seemed to be struck imbecile. Death was staring at him, he fancied, down the stubborn, steel tube—death! and he had never made his salut—would die in the gambling-rooms! He fell back with the rest, using his elbows viciously, and out we went with a rush, like uncorked soda-water opened by an unskilful hand at a picnic.
An arm reached out at me from behind the door as I darted through, and caught my coat. I gave myself a vigorous wrench and swore (the first and only time that night), while my pocket came tearing off in the villain’s grasp. He was very welcome to it, if only as a souvenir.
The hall was pretty empty, for most people who had escaped from the rooms had rushed wildly out into the night, in their terror. When the “Devil among the Tailors” first went off on the terrace, there had been shouts and cries of “Les Anarchistes!” and all who heard it thought the building was about to be blown to atoms with a bomb, and flew, like sand before the wind.