A RAT HUNT
The interior of the entire house was now in an uproar; shots came fast
from every landing; the semi-dusk of stair-well and corridor was
lighted by incessant pistol flashes and the whole building echoed the
deafening racket.
"What do you make of it?" shouted Sengoun furiously, standing like a
baited and perplexed bull. "Who's fighting who in this fool of a
place? By Erlik! I'd like to know whom I'm to fire at!"
Ilse Dumont, creeping along the wall, looked fearfully down at
Weishelm who no longer moved where he lay on the dusty floor, with
eyes and mouth open and his distorted face already half covered by a
wet and crawling scarlet mask.
"Brandes and Stull are betraying us," she whispered. "They are killing
my comrades--on the stairs down there----"
"If that is true," called out Neeland in a low, cautious voice, "you'd
better wait a moment, Sengoun!"
But Sengoun's rage for combat had already filled him to overflowing,
and the last rag of patience left him.
"I don't care who is fighting!" he bellowed. "It's all one to me! Now
is the time to shoot our way out of this. Come on, Neeland! Hurrah for
the Terek Cossacks! Another town taken! Hurrah!"
Neeland caught Ilse by the wrist:
"You'd better get free of this house while you can!" he said, dragging
her with him after Sengoun, who had already reached the head of the
stairs and was starting down, peering about for a target.
Suddenly, on the landing below, Golden Beard and Ali Baba appeared,
caught sight of Sengoun and Neeland above, and opened fire on them
instantly, driving them back from the head of the staircase flat
against the corridor wall. But Golden Beard, seeming to realise now
that the garret landing was held and the way to the roof cut off,
began to retreat from the foot of the garret stairs with Ali Baba
following, their restless, upward-pointed pistols searching for the
slightest movement in the semi-obscurity of the hallway above.
Sengoun, fuming and fretting, had begun to creep toward the head of
the stairs again, when there came a rattling hail of shots from below,
a rush, the trample of feet, the crash of furniture and startling slam
of a door.
Downstairs straight toward the uproar ran Sengoun with Neeland beside
him. The halls were swimming in acrid fumes; the floors trembled and
shook under the shock as a struggling, fighting knot of men went
tumbling down the stairway below, reached the landing and burst into
the rooms of the Cercle Extranationale.
Leaning over the banisters, Neeland saw Golden Beard turn on Doc
Curfoot, raging, magnificent as a Viking, his blue eyes ablaze. He
hurled his empty pistol at the American; seized chairs, bronzes,
andirons, the clock from the mantel, and sent a storm of heavy
missiles through the doorway among the knot of men who were pressing
him and who had already seized Ali Baba.
Then, from the banisters above, Neeland and Sengoun saw Brandes,
moving stealthily, swiftly, edge his way to a further door.
Steadying the elbow of his pistol hand in the hollow cup of his left
palm, his weapon level, swerving as his quarry moved, he presently
fired at Golden Beard and got him through the back. And then he shot
him again deliberately, through the body, as the giant turned, made a
menacing gesture toward him; took an uncertain step in his direction;
another step, wavering, blindly grotesque; then stood swaying there
under the glare of the partly shattered chandelier from which hung
long shreds of crystal prisms.
And Brandes, aiming once more with methodical and merciless precision,
and taking what time he required to make a bull's-eye on this great,
reeling, golden-crowned bull, fired the third shot at his magnificent
head.
The bronze Barye lion dropped from Golden Beard's nerveless fist; the
towering figure, stiffening, fell over rather slowly and lay across
the velvet carpet as rigid as a great tree.
Brandes went into the room, leaned over the dying man and fired into
his body until his pistol was empty. Then he replaced the exhausted
clip leisurely, leering down at his victim.
There was a horrid sound from the stairs, where Curfoot and another
man were killing a waiter. Strange, sinister faces appeared everywhere
from the smoke-filled club rooms; Stull came out into the hallway
below and shouted up through the stair-well:
"Say, Eddie! For Christ's sake come down here! There's a mob outside
on the street and they're tearing the iron shutters off the café!"
Curfoot immediately started downstairs; Brandes, pistol in hand, came
slowly out of the club rooms, still leering, his slitted, greenish
eyes almost phosphorescent in the semi-obscurity.
Suddenly he caught sight of Ilse Dumont standing close behind Sengoun
and Neeland on the landing above.
"By God!" he shouted to Curfoot. "Here she is, Doc! Tell your men!
Tell them she's up here on the next floor!"
Sengoun immediately fired at Brandes, who did not return the shot but
went plunging downstairs into the smoky obscurity below.
"Come on!" roared Sengoun to Neeland, starting forward with levelled
weapon. "They've all gone crazy and it's time we were getting out of
this!"
"Quick!" whispered Neeland to Ilse Dumont. "Follow me downstairs! It's
the only chance for you now!"
But the passageway was blocked by a struggling, cursing, panting
crowd, and they were obliged to retreat into the club rooms.
In the _salle de jeu_, Ali Baba, held fast by three men dressed as
waiters, suddenly tripped up two of them, turned, and leaped for the
doorway. The two men who had been tripped scrambled to their feet and
tore after him. When they reached the hallway the Eurasian was gone;
but all of a sudden there came the crash of a splintered door from the
landing above; and the dim corridor rang with the frightful screaming
of a woman.
"It's--that--that--Russian girl!" stammered Ilse Dumont; "--The girl I
locked in! Oh, my God!--my God! Karl Breslau is killing her!"
Neeland sprang into the hall and leaped up the stairs; but the three
men disguised as waiters had arrived before him.
And there, across the threshold of the bedroom, backed up flat against
the shattered door, Ali Baba was already fighting for his life; and
the frightened Russian girl crept out from the bedroom behind him and
ran to Neeland for protection.
Twice Neeland aimed at Ali Baba, but could not bring himself to fire
at the bleeding, rabid object which snarled and slavered and bit and
kicked, regardless of the blows raining on him. At last one of his
assailants broke the half demented creature's arm with a chair; and
the bloody, battered thing squeaked like a crippled rat and darted
away amid the storm of blows descending, limping and floundering up
the attic stairs, his broken arm flapping with every gasping bound.
After him staggered his sweating and exhausted assailants, reeling
past Neeland and Ilse Dumont and the terrified Russian girl who
crouched behind them. But, halfway up the stairs all three halted and
stood clinging to the banisters as though listening to something on
the floor above them.
Neeland heard it, too: from the roof came a ripping, splintering
sound, as though people on the slates were prying up the bolted
scuttle. The three men on the stairs hesitated a moment longer; then
turned to flee, too late; a hail of pistol shots swept the attic
stairs; all three men came pitching and tumbling down to the landing.
Two of them lay still; one rose immediately and limped on again down
the hallway, calling over the banisters to those below:
"The Germans on the leads 'ave busted into the garret! Breslau is up
'ere! Send along those American gunmen, or somebody what can shoot!"
He was a grey-haired Englishman, smooth shaven and grim; and, as he
stood there at the head of the further stairs, breathing heavily,
awaiting aid from below, he said to Neeland coolly enough:
"You'd better go below, sir. We 'ad our orders to take this Breslau
rat alive, but we can't do it now, and there's like to be a 'orrid
mess 'ere directly."
"Can we get through below?"
"_You_ can," said the man significantly, "but they'll be detaining one
o' them ladies at the door."
"Do you mean me?" said Ilse Dumont.
"Yes, ma'am, I do----"
She sprang toward the attic stairway, but the British agent whipped
out a pistol and covered her.
"No," he said grimly. "You're wanted below. Go down!"
She came slowly back to where Neeland was standing.
"You'll have to take your chance below," he said under his breath.
"I'll stand by you to the end."
She smiled and continued on toward the stairs where the English agent
stood. Neeland and the Russian girl followed her.
The agent said:
"There's 'ell to pay below, sir."
The depths of the house rang with the infernal din of blows falling on
iron shutters. A deeper, more sinister roar rose from the mob outside.
There was a struggle going on inside the building, too; Neeland could
hear the trampling and surging of men on every floor--voices calling
from room to room, shouts of anger, the terrible outcry of a man in
agony.
"Wot a rat's nest, then, there was in this here blessed 'ouse, sir!"
said the British agent, coolly. "If we get Breslau and the others on
the roof we've bagged 'em all."
The Russian girl was trembling so violently that Neeland took her by
the arm. But Ilse Dumont, giving her a glance of contempt, moved
calmly past the British agent to the head of the stairway.
"Come," she said to Neeland.
The agent, leaning over the banisters, shouted to a man on the next
floor:
"Look sharp below there! I'm sendin' Miss Dumont down with Mr.
Neeland, the American! Take her in charge, Bill!"
"Send her along!" bawled the man, framing his face with both hands.
"Keep Breslau on the roof a bit and we'll 'ave the beggar in a few
moments!"
Somebody else shouted up from the tumult below:
"It's war, 'Arry! 'Ave you 'eard? It's war this morning! Them 'Uns 'as
declared war! And the perlice is a-killin' of the Apaches all over
Paris!"
Ilse Dumont looked curiously at the agent, calmly at Neeland, then,
dropping one hand on the banisters, she went lightly down the stairs
toward the uproar below, followed by Neeland and the Russian girl
clinging to his arm with both desperate little hands.
The British agent hung far over the banisters until he saw his
colleague join them on the floor below; then, reassured, and on guard
again, he leaned back against the corridor wall, his pistol resting on
his thigh, and fixed his cold grey eyes on the attic stairs once
more.
The secret agent who now joined Neeland and Ilse Dumont on the fourth
floor had evidently been constructing a barricade across the hallway
as a precaution in case of a rush from the Germans on the roof.
Chairs and mattresses, piled shoulder high, obstructed the passageway,
blocking the stairs; and the secret agent--a very young man with red
hair and in the garb of a waiter--clambered over it, revolver in one
hand, a pair of handcuffs in the other. He lost his balance on top of
the shaky heap; strove desperately to recover it, scrambled like a cat
in a tub, stumbled, rolled over on a mattress.
And there Neeland pinned him, closing his mouth with one hand and his
throat with the other, while Ilse Dumont tore weapon and handcuffs
from his grasp, snapped the latter over his wrists, snatched the case
from a bedroom pillow lying among the mattresses, and, with Neeland's
aid, swathed the struggling man's head in it.
"Into that clothes-press!" whispered Ilse, pointing along the hallway
where a door swung open.
"Help me lift him!" motioned Neeland.
Together they got him clear of the shaky barricade and, lugging him
between them, deposited him on the floor of the clothes-press and
locked the door.
So silent had they been that, listening, they heard no movement from
the watcher on the floor above, who stood guard at the attic stairs.
And it was evident he had heard nothing to make him suspicious.
The Russian girl, dreadfully pale, leaned against the wall as though
her limbs scarcely supported her. Neeland passed his arm under hers,
nodded to Ilse Dumont, and started cautiously down the carpeted
stairs, his automatic pistol in one hand, and the revolver taken from
the imprisoned secret agent clutched tightly in the other.
Down the stairs they crept, straight toward the frightful tumult still
raging below--down past the wrecked club rooms; past a dead man
sprawling on the landing across the blood-soaked carpet--down into the
depths of the dusky building toward the lighted café floor whence came
the uproar of excited men, while, from the street outside, rose the
frantic yelling of the mob mingled with the crash of glass and the
clanging dissonance of iron grilles and shutters which were being
battered into fragments.
"It's my chance, now!" whispered Ilse Dumont, slipping past him like a
shadow.
For a moment he saw her silhouetted against the yellow electric glare
on the stairs below, then, half carrying the almost helpless Russian
girl, he stumbled down the last flight of stairs and pushed his way
through a hurrying group of men who seemed to be searching for
something, for they were tearing open cupboards and buffets, dragging
out table drawers and tumbling linen, crockery, and glassware all over
the black and white marble floor.
The whole place was ankle deep in shattered glass and broken bottles,
and the place reeked with smoke and the odour of wine and spirits.
Neeland forced his way forward into the café, looked around for
Sengoun, and saw him almost immediately.
The young Russian, flushed, infuriated, his collar gone and his coat
in tatters, was struggling with some men who held both his arms but
did not offer to strike him.
Behind him, crowded back into a corner near the cashier's
steel-grilled desk, stood Ilse Dumont, calm, disdainful, confronted by
Brandes, whose swollen, greenish eyes, injected with blood, glared
redly at her. Stull had hold of him and was trying to drag him away:
"For God's sake, Eddie, shut your mouth," he pleaded in English. "You
can't do _that_ to her, whatever she done to you!"
But Brandes, disengaging himself with a jerk, pushed his way past
Sengoun to where Ilse stood.
"I've got the goods on _you_!" he said in a ferocious voice that
neither Stull nor Curfoot recognised. "You know what you did to me,
don't you! You took my wife from me! Yes, my _wife_! She _was_ my
wife! She _is_ my wife!--For all you did, you lying, treacherous
slut!--For all you've done to break me, double-cross me, ruin me,
drive me out of every place I went! And now I've got you! I've sold
you out! Get that? And you know what they'll do to you, don't you?
Well, you'll see when----"
Curfoot and Stull threw themselves against him, but Brandes, his round
face pasty with fury, struggled back again to confront Ilse Dumont.
"Ruined me!" he repeated. "Took away from me the only thing God ever
gave me for my own! Took my wife!"
"You dog!" said Ilse Dumont very slowly. "You dirty dog!"
A frightful spasm crossed Brandes' features, and Stull snatched at the
pistol he had whipped out. There was a struggle; Brandes wrenched the
weapon free; but Neeland tore his way past Curfoot and struck Brandes
in the face with the butt of his heavy revolver.
Instantly the group parted right and left; Sengoun suddenly twisted
out of the clutches of the men who held him, sprang upon Curfoot, and
jerked the pistol from his fist. At the same moment the entire front
of the café gave way and the mob crashed inward with a roar amid the
deafening din of shattered metal and the clash of splintering glass.
Through the dust and falling shower of débris, Brandes fired at Ilse
Dumont, reeled about in the whirl of the inrushing throng engulfing
him, still firing blindly at the woman who had been his wife.
Neeland put a bullet into his pistol arm, and it fell. But Brandes
stretched it out again with a supreme effort, pointing at Ilse Dumont
with jewelled and bloody fingers:
"That woman is a German spy! A spy!" he screamed. "You damn French
mutts, do you understand what I say! Oh, my God! Will someone who
speaks French tell them! Will somebody tell them she's a spy! _La
femme! Cette femme!_" he shrieked. "_Elle est espion! Esp----!_" He
fired again, with his left hand. Then Sengoun shot him through the
head; and at the same moment somebody stabbed Curfoot in the neck; and
the lank American gambler turned and cried out to Stull in a voice
half strangled with pain and fury:
"Look out, Ben. There are apaches in this mob! That one in the striped
jersey knifed me----"
"_Tiens, v'la pour toi, sale mec de malheur!_" muttered a voice at his
elbow, and a blow from a slung-shot crushed the base of his skull.
As Curfoot crumpled up, Stull caught him; but the tall gambler's dead
weight bore Stull to his knees among the fierce apaches.
And there, fighting in silence to the end, his chalky face of a sick
clown meeting undaunted the overwhelming odds against him, Stull was
set upon by the apaches and stabbed and stabbed until his clothing was
a heap of ribbons and the watch and packet of French bank-notes which
the assassins tore from his body were dripping with his blood.
Sengoun and Neeland, their evening clothes in tatters, hatless,
dishevelled, began shooting their way out of the hell of murder and
destruction raging around them.
Behind them crept Ilse Dumont and the Russian girl: dust and smoke
obscured the place where the mob raged from floor to floor in a frenzy
of destruction, tearing out fixtures, telephones, window-sashes,
smashing tables, bar fixtures, mirrors, ripping the curtains from the
windows and the very carpets from the floor in their overwhelming rage
against this German café.
That apaches had entered with them the mob cared nothing; the red lust
of destruction blinded them to everything except their terrible
necessity for the annihilation of this place.
If they saw murder done, and robbery--if they heard shots in the
tumult and saw pistol flashes through the dust and grey light of
daybreak, they never turned from their raging work.
Out of the frightful turmoil stormed Neeland and Sengoun, their
pistols spitting flame, the two women clinging to their ragged
sleeves. Twice the apaches barred their way with bared knives,
crouching for a rush; but Sengoun fired into them and Neeland's
bullets dropped the ruffian in the striped jersey where he stood over
Stull's twitching body; and the sinister creatures leaped back from
the levelled weapons, turned, and ran.
Through the gaping doorway sprang Sengoun, his empty pistol menacing
the crowd that choked the shadowy street; Neeland flung away his
pistol and turned his revolver on those in the café behind him, as
Ilse Dumont and the Russian girl crept through and out into the
street.
The crowd was cheering and shouting:
"Down with the Germans! To the Brasserie Schwarz!"
An immense wave of people surged suddenly across the rue Vilna, headed
toward the German cafés on the Boulevard; and then, for the first
time, Neeland caught sight of policemen standing in little groups,
coolly watching the destruction of the Café 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 café, 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, pushing,
striking with white-gloved fists, shouting for right of way.
Other police came running, showing that they had been perfectly aware
that German cafés were being attacked and wrecked. A mounted inspector
forced his horse along the swarming sidewalk, crying:
"_Allons! Circulez! C'est défendu 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 cafés; 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 café
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 horsemen 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 _impasse_.
The troop captain, pushing 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 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.
"Then will you take this Russian girl to her home, Sengoun?" he asked.
And added in a low voice: "She is one of your own people, you know."
"All right," said Sengoun blissfully. "I'd take the devil home if you
asked me! Besides, I can talk to her about my regiment on the way.
That will be wonderful, Neeland! That will be quite wonderful! I can
talk to her in Russian about my regiment all the way home!"
He laughed and looked at his friend, at Ilse Dumont, at the drooping
figure he was to take under his escort. He glanced down at his own
ragged attire where he stood hatless, collarless, one sleeve of his
evening coat ripped open to the shoulder.
"Isn't it wonderful!" he cried, bursting out into uncontrollable
laughter. "Neeland, my dear comrade, this has been the most
delightfully wonderful night of my entire life! But the great miracle
is still to come! Hurrah for a thousand lances! Hurrah! Town taken by
Prince Erlik! Hurrah!"
And he seized the young girl whom he was to escort to her
home--wherever that hazy locality might be--and carried her in his
arms to the taxicab, amid encouraging shouts of laughter from the line
of cavalrymen who had been watching the proceedings from the corner of
the rue Vilna.
That shout of Gallic appreciation inflamed Sengoun: he reached for his
hat, to lift and wave it, but found no hat on his head. So he waved
his tattered sleeve instead:
"Hurrah for France!" he shouted. "Hurrah for Russia! I'm Sengoun, of
the Terek!--And I am to have a thousand lances with which to explain
to the Germans my opinion of them and of their Emperor!"
The troopers cheered him from their stirrups, in spite of their
officers, who pretended to check their men.
"_Vive la France! Vive la Russie!_" they roared. "Forward the Terek
Cossacks!"
Sengoun turned to Ilse Dumont:
"Madame," he said, "in gratitude and admiration!"--and he gracefully
saluted her hand. Then, to his comrade: "Neeland!"--seizing both the
American's hands. "Such a night and such a comrade I shall never
forget! I adore our night together; I love you as a brother. I shall
see you before I go?"
"Surely, Sengoun, my dear comrade!"
"_Alors--au revoir!_" He sprang into the taxicab. "To the Russian
Embassy!" he called out; and turned to the half fainting girl on the
seat beside him.
"Where do you live, my dear?" he asked very gently, taking her icy
hand in his.