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Page 74
Billy saw his white teeth show in a deadly smile. Back of him a
dark, heavy figure appeared and the Captain, without turning his
head or moving his eyes or his gun from Billy, gave some rapid
directions in Turkish and the figure disappeared. It occurred to
Billy like a flash that from that secret passage where the figure
had appeared there was a panel into the room on the right and that
room had a door opening into the hall outside. The next moment he
felt the door behind him open.
Then he pulled the trigger of that gun in his pocket in which his
hand had been so lightly resting. The Captain seemed to fire the
same instant, but Billy had jumped aside as he shot his own gun and
he heard the bullet singing past his ear, and now, with his revolver
out of his pocket, he shot again with an aim so true that the other
man's right hand gave a spasmodic jerk and the revolver went
spinning to the ground.
Across the room he hurled himself, springing from the onslaught of
the assailant entering behind him, and thrusting the cursing Captain
from his path he leaped through the sliding panel. The lock clicked
home and he paused even in that moment of hammering pulses and
pounding heart to fumble in the darkness to shut that other panel
into the next room, remembering Fritzi's warning that those locks
needed a key to open them from within. The minute's delay for the
key would mean many minutes for him.
He stumbled against the tiny stairs that led to the tower room
through which Falconer had descended, but he did not dash up those
stairs for he heard the noise of feet overhead, as if returning from
pursuit, and he darted straight on through the long, narrow,
unlighted corridor, running like a hare.
At the other end he crashed against a half-open door and fell
headlong down a flight of stairs. From his astonished fingers the
revolver went clattering and though he picked himself up, battered
but unbroken, at the foot, he dared not waste a minute to go back
and hunt for the gun in the dark. He was totally at a loss for
directions; he had expected to find himself in the Captain's rooms,
and the stairs were unknown. Now he could just make out a door ahead
of him and sent it flying open, smash in the face of an astonished
black boy who went stumbling backwards.
Out went Billy's fist and caught the unguarded chin a staggering
blow, and as the boy reeled back he flung one hurried glance about
the big, lamp-lit chamber in which he found himself, the room
evidently of Captain Kerissen, and darted to an arsenal of weapons
that glinted against the inlaid panels. Wrenching down the shortest
scabbard he jerked out a most villainous looking two-edged knife and
gripping this piratical weapon he bounded out the door, fled through
the dim hall to his right, rounded a corner, to the right again,
hearing the sounds of pursuit louder and louder now behind him, shot
through a vast reception hall and plunged down a flight of stairs.
From the darkness below a figure rose up to receive him with a grip
like iron. Billy's right arm was doubled at his side; the blade of
that villainous old dagger was pressed against the yielding softness
of the fellow's sash, but for the life of him Billy could not drive
home that knife against the human flesh. With a convulsive movement
he tore himself from those gorilla arms and sent up a desperate
kick, then leaped past the staggering man, and with the unused knife
in his teeth, he tore at the bars of the great gate in the wall at
his left. The bars were stiff and primitive and resisted his furious
fingers, and the big gate-keeper, gasping for a moment against the
stairs, suddenly straightened and sprang toward him.
"Here's one hero that didn't open the door 'in the nick of time'!"
raced through Billy's grimly humorous mind, as he dodged the savage
thrust of a knife the man had drawn and turned and scuttled across
the court with the other on his heels. Through the arches he darted
and then down into the garden, sprinting as he had never sprinted
before, on, on to the southwest angles of the wall, thanking Heaven
fervently, as every step outdistanced his pursuer, that the man had
evidently no gun.
The rope ladder was still there, blown free at the bottom now and
waving merrily in the wind. He snatched at it, dropping his knife in
his pocket, praying that the top hooks had not become dislodged, and
after him came the other man, hand over hand. Billy drew up his legs
in a horrid fear of having them gripped or hacked at, and gained the
top just as the other's head appeared below, his knife gleaming in
his teeth.
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