The Dark Star

"An apache," said Sengoun coolly. "That's right, too. It's the way we

do in Russia when we clean house for war----"

His face reddened and lighted joyously.

"Thank God for my thousand lances!" he said, lifting his eyes to the

yellowing sky between the houses in the narrow street. "Thank God!

Thank God!"

Now, across the intersections of streets and alleys beyond where they

stood, policemen and Garde cavalry were shooting into doorways,

basements, and up the sombre, dusky lanes, the dry crack of their

service revolvers re-echoing noisily through the street.

Toward the Boulevard below, a line of police and of cavalrymen

blocked the rue Vilna; and, beyond them, the last of the mob was being

driven from the Café des Bulgars, where the first ambulances were

arriving and the police, guarding the ruins, were already looking out

of windows on the upper floors.

A cavalryman came clattering down the rue Vilna, gesticulating and

calling out to Sengoun and Neeland to take their ladies and depart.

"Get us a taxicab--there's a good fellow!" cried Sengoun in high

spirits; and the cavalryman, looking at their dishevelled attire,

laughed and nodded as he rode ahead of them down the rue Vilna.

There were several taxicabs on the Boulevard, their drivers staring up

at the wrecked café. As Neeland spoke to the driver of one of the

cabs, Ilse Dumont stepped back beside the silent girl whom she had

locked in the bedroom.

"I gave you a chance," she said under her breath. "What may I expect

from you? Answer me quickly!--What am I to expect?"

The girl seemed dazed: "N-nothing," she stammered. "The--the horror of that place--the

killing--has sickened me. I--I want to go home----"

"You do not intend to denounce me?"

"No--Oh, God! No!"

"Is that the truth? If you are lying to me it means my death."

The girl gazed at her in horror; tears sprang to her eyes: "I couldn't--I couldn't!" she stammered in a choking voice. "I've

never before seen death--never seen how it came--how men die!

This--this killing is horrible, revolting!" She had laid one trembling

little hand on Ilse Dumont's bare shoulder. "I don't want to have you

killed; the idea of death makes me ill! I'm going home--that is all I

ask for--to go home----"

She dropped her pretty head and began to sob hysterically, standing

there under the growing daylight of the Boulevard, in her tattered

evening gown.

Suddenly Ilse Dumont threw both arms around her and kissed the

feverish, tear-wet face: "You weren't meant for this!" she whispered. "You do it for money. Go

home. Do anything else for wages--anything except this!--Anything, I

tell you----"

Neeland's hand touched her arm: "I have a cab. Are you going home with her?"

"I dare not," she said.