Part 87 (2/2)
The crowd was cheering and shouting:
”Down with the Germans! To the Bra.s.serie Schwarz!”
An immense wave of people surged suddenly across the rue Vilna, headed toward the German cafes on the Boulevard; and then, for the first time, Neeland caught sight of policemen standing in little groups, coolly watching the destruction of the Cafe des Bulgars.
Either they were too few to cope with the mob, or they were indifferent as to what was being done to a German cafe, but one thing was plain; the police had not the faintest idea that murder had been rampant in the place. For, when suddenly a dead body was thrown from the door out on the sidewalk, their police whistles shrilled through the street, and they started for the mob, resolutely, pus.h.i.+ng, striking with white-gloved fists, shouting for right of way.
Other police came running, showing that they had been perfectly aware that German cafes were being attacked and wrecked. A mounted inspector forced his horse along the swarming sidewalk, crying:
”_Allons! Circulez! C'est defendu de s'attrouper dans la rue! Mais fichez-moi le camp, nom de Dieu! Les Allemands ne sont pas encore dans la place!_”
Along the street and on the Boulevard mobs were forming and already storming three other German cafes; a squadron of Republican Guard cavalry arrived at a trot, their helmets glittering in the increasing daylight, driving before them a mob which had begun to attack a cafe on the corner.
A captain, superbly mounted, rode ahead of the advancing line of horses, warning the throng back into the rue Vilna, up which the mob now recoiled, sullenly protesting.
Neeland and Sengoun and the two women were forced back with the crowd as a double rank of steel-helmeted hors.e.m.e.n advanced, sweeping everybody into the rue Vilna.
Up the street, through the vague morning light, they retired between ranks of closed and silent houses, past narrow, evil-looking streets and stony alleys still dark with the shadows of the night.
Into one of these Neeland started with Ilse Dumont, but Sengoun drew him back with a sharp exclamation of warning. At the same time the crowd all around them became aware of what was going on in the maze of dusky lanes and alleys past which they were being driven by the cavalry; and the people broke and scattered like rabbits, darting through the cavalry, dodging, scuttling under the very legs of the horses.
The troop, thrown into disorder, tried to check the panic-stricken flight; a brigadier, spurring forward to learn the cause of the hysterical stampede, drew bridle sharply, then whipped his pistol out of the saddle-holster, and galloped into an _impa.s.se_.
The troop captain, pus.h.i.+ng his horse, caught sight of Sengoun and Neeland in the remains of their evening dress; and he glanced curiously at them, and at the two young women clad in the rags of evening gowns.
”_Nom de Dieu!_” he cried. ”What are such people as you doing here? Go back! This is no quarter for honest folk!”
”What are those police doing in the alleys?” demanded Sengoun; but the captain cantered his horse up the street, pistol lifted; and they saw him fire from his saddle at a man who darted out of an alley and who started to run across the street.
The captain missed every shot, but a trooper, whose horse had come up on the sidewalk beside Neeland, fired twice more after the running man, and dropped him at the second shot.
”A good business, too,” he said calmly, winking at Neeland. ”You _bourgeois_ ought to be glad that we're ordered to clean up Paris for you. And now is the time to do it,” he added, reloading his weapon.
Sengoun said in a low voice to Neeland:
”They're ridding the city of apaches. It's plain enough that they have orders to kill them where they find them! Look!” he added, pointing to the dead wall across the street; ”It's here at last, and Paris is cleaning house and getting ready for it! This is war, Neeland--war at last!”
Neeland looked across the street where, under a gas lamp on a rusty iron bracket, was pasted the order for general mobilisation. And on the sidewalk at the base of the wall lay a man, face downward, his dusty shoes crossed under the wide flaring trousers, the greasy _casquet_ still crowding out his lop ears; his hand clenched beside a stiletto which lay on the stone flagging beside him.
”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 G.o.d for my thousand lances!” he said, lifting his eyes to the yellowing sky between the houses in the narrow street. ”Thank G.o.d!
Thank G.o.d!”
Now, across the intersections of streets and alleys beyond where they stood, policemen and Garde cavalry were shooting into doorways, bas.e.m.e.nts, and up the sombre, dusky lanes, the dry crack of their service revolvers re-echoing noisily through the street.
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