Роберт Чамберс - The Dark Star

Neeland jerked up his pistol as a nearer volley rattled out on the landing directly underneath.

Sengoun, exasperated, shouted:

"Well, what the devil is all this!" and ran toward the head of the stairs, his pistol lifted for action.

Then, in the garret doorway, Weishelm appeared, his handsome face streaming blood. He staggered, turned mechanically toward the stairs again with wavering revolver; but a shot drove him blindly backward and another hurled him full length across the floor, where he lay with both arms spread out, and the last tremors, running from his feet to his twitching face.

The interior of the entire house was now in an uproar; shots came fast from every landing; the semi–dusk of stair–well and corridor was lighted by incessant pistol flashes and the whole building echoed the deafening racket.

"What do you make of it?" shouted Sengoun furiously, standing like a baited and perplexed bull. "Who's fighting who in this fool of a place? By Erlik! I'd like to know whom I'm to fire at!"

Ilse Dumont, creeping along the wall, looked fearfully down at Weishelm who no longer moved where he lay on the dusty floor, with eyes and mouth open and his distorted face already half covered by a wet and crawling scarlet mask.

"Brandes and Stull are betraying us," she whispered. "They are killing my comrades—on the stairs down there―"

"If that is true," called out Neeland in a low, cautious voice, "you'd better wait a moment, Sengoun!"

But Sengoun's rage for combat had already filled him to overflowing, and the last rag of patience left him.

"I don't care who is fighting!" he bellowed. "It's all one to me! Now is the time to shoot our way out of this. Come on, Neeland! Hurrah for the Terek Cossacks! Another town taken! Hurrah!"

Neeland caught Ilse by the wrist:

"You'd better get free of this house while you can!" he said, dragging her with him after Sengoun, who had already reached the head of the stairs and was starting down, peering about for a target.

Suddenly, on the landing below, Golden Beard and Ali Baba appeared, caught sight of Sengoun and Neeland above, and opened fire on them instantly, driving them back from the head of the staircase flat against the corridor wall. But Golden Beard, seeming to realise now that the garret landing was held and the way to the roof cut off, began to retreat from the foot of the garret stairs with Ali Baba following, their restless, upward–pointed pistols searching for the slightest movement in the semi–obscurity of the hallway above.

Sengoun, fuming and fretting, had begun to creep toward the head of the stairs again, when there came a rattling hail of shots from below, a rush, the trample of feet, the crash of furniture and startling slam of a door.

Downstairs straight toward the uproar ran Sengoun with Neeland beside him. The halls were swimming in acrid fumes; the floors trembled and shook under the shock as a struggling, fighting knot of men went tumbling down the stairway below, reached the landing and burst into the rooms of the Cercle Extranationale.

Leaning over the banisters, Neeland saw Golden Beard turn on Doc Curfoot, raging, magnificent as a Viking, his blue eyes ablaze. He hurled his empty pistol at the American; seized chairs, bronzes, andirons, the clock from the mantel, and sent a storm of heavy missiles through the doorway among the knot of men who were pressing him and who had already seized Ali Baba.

Then, from the banisters above, Neeland and Sengoun saw Brandes, moving stealthily, swiftly, edge his way to a further door.

Steadying the elbow of his pistol hand in the hollow cup of his left palm, his weapon level, swerving as his quarry moved, he presently fired at Golden Beard and got him through the back. And then he shot him again deliberately, through the body, as the giant turned, made a menacing gesture toward him; took an uncertain step in his direction; another step, wavering, blindly grotesque; then stood swaying there under the glare of the partly shattered chandelier from which hung long shreds of crystal prisms.

And Brandes, aiming once more with methodical and merciless precision, and taking what time he required to make a bull's–eye on this great, reeling, golden–crowned bull, fired the third shot at his magnificent head.

The bronze Barye lion dropped from Golden Beard's nerveless fist; the towering figure, stiffening, fell over rather slowly and lay across the velvet carpet as rigid as a great tree.

Brandes went into the room, leaned over the dying man and fired into his body until his pistol was empty. Then he replaced the exhausted clip leisurely, leering down at his victim.

There was a horrid sound from the stairs, where Curfoot and another man were killing a waiter. Strange, sinister faces appeared everywhere from the smoke–filled club rooms; Stull came out into the hallway below and shouted up through the stair–well:

"Say, Eddie! For Christ's sake come down here! There's a mob outside on the street and they're tearing the iron shutters off the café!"

Curfoot immediately started downstairs; Brandes, pistol in hand, came slowly out of the club rooms, still leering, his slitted, greenish eyes almost phosphorescent in the semi–obscurity.

Suddenly he caught sight of Ilse Dumont standing close behind Sengoun and Neeland on the landing above.

"By God!" he shouted to Curfoot. "Here she is, Doc! Tell your men! Tell them she's up here on the next floor!"

Sengoun immediately fired at Brandes, who did not return the shot but went plunging downstairs into the smoky obscurity below.

"Come on!" roared Sengoun to Neeland, starting forward with levelled weapon. "They've all gone crazy and it's time we were getting out of this!"

"Quick!" whispered Neeland to Ilse Dumont. "Follow me downstairs! It's the only chance for you now!"

But the passageway was blocked by a struggling, cursing, panting crowd, and they were obliged to retreat into the club rooms.

In the salle de jeu , Ali Baba, held fast by three men dressed as waiters, suddenly tripped up two of them, turned, and leaped for the doorway. The two men who had been tripped scrambled to their feet and tore after him. When they reached the hallway the Eurasian was gone; but all of a sudden there came the crash of a splintered door from the landing above; and the dim corridor rang with the frightful screaming of a woman.

"It's—that—that—Russian girl!" stammered Ilse Dumont; "—The girl I locked in! Oh, my God!—my God! Karl Breslau is killing her!"

Neeland sprang into the hall and leaped up the stairs; but the three men disguised as waiters had arrived before him.

And there, across the threshold of the bedroom, backed up flat against the shattered door, Ali Baba was already fighting for his life; and the frightened Russian girl crept out from the bedroom behind him and ran to Neeland for protection.

Twice Neeland aimed at Ali Baba, but could not bring himself to fire at the bleeding, rabid object which snarled and slavered and bit and kicked, regardless of the blows raining on him. At last one of his assailants broke the half demented creature's arm with a chair; and the bloody, battered thing squeaked like a crippled rat and darted away amid the storm of blows descending, limping and floundering up the attic stairs, his broken arm flapping with every gasping bound.

After him staggered his sweating and exhausted assailants, reeling past Neeland and Ilse Dumont and the terrified Russian girl who crouched behind them. But, halfway up the stairs all three halted and stood clinging to the banisters as though listening to something on the floor above them.

Neeland heard it, too: from the roof came a ripping, splintering sound, as though people on the slates were prying up the bolted scuttle. The three men on the stairs hesitated a moment longer; then turned to flee, too late; a hail of pistol shots swept the attic stairs; all three men came pitching and tumbling down to the landing.