The Dark Star

"I'll keep my word to you," said Ilse Dumont. "When it becomes too

late for you to do us any mischief, I'll return and let you go."

And she stepped back across the threshold and locked the door on the

outside.

As she did so, Neeland and Sengoun came swiftly up the stairs, and she

beckoned them to follow, gathered the skirts of her evening gown into

one hand, and ran up the stairs ahead of them to the fifth floor.

In the dim light Neeland saw that the top floor was merely a vast

attic full of débris from the café on the ground floor--iron tables

which required mending or repainting, iron chairs, great jars of

artificial stone with dead baytrees standing in them, parts of rusty

stoves and kitchen ranges, broken cutlery in boxes, cracked table

china and heavier kitchen crockery in tubs which once had held

flowers.

The only windows gave on a court. Through their dirty panes already

the grey light of that early Sunday morning glimmered, revealing the

contents of the shadowy place, and the position of an iron ladder

hooked to two rings under the scuttle overhead.

Ilse Dumont laid her finger on her lips, conjuring silence, then,

clutching her silken skirts, she started up the iron ladder, reached

the top, and, exerting all her strength, lifted the hinged scuttle

leading to the leads outside.

Instantly somebody challenged her in a guttural voice. She stood there

a few moments in whispered conversation, then, from outside, somebody

lowered the scuttle cover; the girl locked it, descended the iron

ladder backwards, and came swiftly across to where Neeland and Sengoun

were standing, pistols lifted.

"They're guarding the roof," she whispered, "--two men. It is

hopeless, that way."

"The proper way," said Sengoun calmly, "is for us to shoot our way out

of this!"

The girl turned on him in a passion: "Do you suppose I care what happens to you?" she said. "If there

were no one else to consider you might do as you pleased, for all it

concerns me!"

Sengoun reddened: "Be silent, you treacherous little cat!" he retorted. "Do you imagine

your riffraff are going to hold me here when I'm ready to depart!

Me! A free Cossack! Bah!"

"Don't talk that way, Sengoun," said Neeland sharply. "We owe these

pistols to her."

"Oh," muttered Sengoun, shooting a menacing glance at her. "I didn't

understand that." Then his scowl softened and a sudden laugh cleared

his face.