“They are in!” said Steinmetz. “The side door.”
And the two men looked at each other with wide eyes full of knowledge.
As they ran to the foot of the broad staircase the tramp of scuffling feet, the roar of angry voices, came through the passages from the back of curtained doorways. The servants’ quarters seemed to be pandemonium. The sounds approached.
“Halfway up!” said Paul, and they ran halfway up the broad staircase side by side. There they stood and waited.
In a moment the baize doors were burst open, and a scuffling mass of men and women poured into the hall—a very sewer of humanity.
A yell of execration signalized their recognition of the prince.
“They are mad!” said Steinmetz, as the crowd surged forward toward the stairs with waving arms and the dull gleam of steel; with wild faces turned upward, wild mouths bellowing hatred and murder.
“It is a chance—it may stop them!” said Steinmetz.
His arm was outstretched steadily. A loud report, a little puff of smoke shooting upward to the gilded ceiling, and for one brief moment the crowd stood still, watching one of their ringleaders, who was turning and twisting on his side half a dozen steps from the bottom.
The man writhed in silence with his hand to his breast, and the crowd stood aghast. He held up his hand and gazed at it with a queer stupefaction. The blood dripped from his fingers. Then his chin went up as if someone was gripping the back of his neck. He turned over slowly and rolled to the bottom of the stairs.
Then Paul raised his voice.
“Listen to me!” he said.
But he got no farther, for someone shot at him from the background, over the frantic heads of the others, and missed him. The bullet lodged in the wall at the head of the stairs, in the jamb of the gorgeous doorway. It is there today.
There was a yell of hatred, and an ugly charge toward the stairs; but the sight of the two revolvers held them there—motionless for a few moments. Those in front pushed back, while the shouters in the safe background urged them forward by word and gesture.
Two men holding a hundred in check! But one of the two was a prince, which makes all the difference, and will continue to make that difference, despite halfpenny journalism, until the end of the world.
“What do you want?” cried Paul.
“Oh, I will wait!” he shouted, in the next pause. “There is plenty of time—when you are tired of shouting.”
Several of them proceeded to tell him what they wanted. An old story, too stale for repetition here. Paul recognized in the din of many voices the tinkling arguments of the professional agitator all the world over—the cry of “Equality! Equality!” when men are obviously created unequal.
“Look out!” said Paul; “I believe they are going to make a rush.”
All the while the foremost men were edging toward the stairs, while the densely packed throng at the back were struggling among themselves. In the passages behind, some were yelling and screaming with a wild intonation which Steinmetz recognized. He had been through the Commune.
“Those fellows at the back have been killing someone,” he said; “I can tell by their voices. They are drunk with the sight of blood.”
Some new orator gained the ears of the rabble at this moment, and the ill-kempt heads swayed from side to side.
“It is useless,” he cried, “telling him what you want. He will not give it you. Go and take it! Go and take it, little fathers; that is the only way!”
Steinmetz raised his hand and peered down into the crowd, looking for the man of eloquence, and the voice was hushed.
At this moment, however, the yelling increased, and through the doorway leading to the servants’ quarters came a stream of men—bloodstained, ragged, torn. They were waving arms and implements above their heads.
“Down with the aristocrats! kill them—kill them!” they were shrieking.
A little volley of firearms further excited them. But vodka is not a good thing to shoot upon, and Paul stood untouched, waiting, as he had said, until they were tired of shouting.
“Now,” yelled Steinmetz to him in English, “we must go. We can make a stand at the head of the stairs, then the doorway, then—” He shrugged his shoulders. “Then—the end,” he added, as they moved up the stairs step by step, backward. “My very good friend,” he went on, “at the door we must begin to shoot them down. It is our only chance. It is, moreover, our duty toward the ladies.”
“There is one alternative,” answered Paul.
“The Moscow Doctor?”
“Yes.”
“They may turn,” said Paul; “they are just in that humor.”
The newcomers were the most dangerous. They were forcing their way to the front. There was no doubt that, as soon as they could penetrate the densely packed mob, they would charge up the stairs, even in face of a heavy fire. The reek of vodka was borne up in the heated atmosphere, mingled with the nauseating odor of filthy clothing.
“Go,” said Steinmetz, “and put on your doctor’s clothes. I can keep them back for a few minutes.”
There was no time to be lost. Paul slipped away, leaving Steinmetz alone at the summit of the state stairway, standing grimly, revolver in hand.
In the drawing-room Paul found Maggie, alone.
“Where is Etta?” he asked.
“She left the room some time ago.”
“But I told her to stay,” said Paul.
To this Maggie made no answer. She was looking at him with an anxious scrutiny.
“Did they shoot at you?” she asked.
“Yes; but not straight,” he answered, with a little laugh, as he hurried on.
In a few moments he was back in the drawing-room, a different man, in the rough, stained clothes of the Moscow Doctor. The din on the stairs was louder. Steinmetz was almost in the doorway. He was shooting economically, picking his men.
With an
