There was no immediate move. Already the fans were slackening in speed and breathing became every second more difficult. Roger, standing upright, was once more feeling his way along the wall to the spot where he had noticed the electric light switch. He found it at last embedded in a little circle of metal, set his teeth, gripped tighter and tighter still and finally made his effort. It broke away in his grasp and he staggered back with bleeding hands into the chaos of darkness. Then Paul Viotti’s voice was heard, raised this time to about ordinary talking pitch.
“The dynamo is running down,” he gasped. “There’ll be no air here in five minutes. Turn on the light, some one. Damn it, why don’t you turn on the light? We must make sure that we put Sloane out. Staines, you’re on that side, aren’t you? Open the chute.”
Terence Brown’s quavering voice came from somewhere in the obscurity.
“The switch has gone. It’s been pulled out. Oh, God, I can’t breathe!”
The room was suddenly filled with the wailing cries of a man in hysteria.
“My head—bursts. Let me out! Let us open the door. I have done no wrong. This was all for Paul. Open the door! We shall die—without air—I suffocate!”
Not a soul wasted his breath in reply. The moments passed, grew into minutes. Then Pierre Viotti’s voice again—fainter this time—full of the malice of a half-mad, dying beast.
“Where’s Sloane? Where are you, you American dog? I’m going to kill you before the light comes. Paul—Staines—where’s Sloane?”
The voice was growing nearer and nearer. They could hear him reeling towards them. Savonarilda stretched out his arm and drew Roger back.
“I’m going to kill Sloane,” Pierre Viotti called out, with a sudden access of strength in his voice. “The light will come directly. I will kill him first. Where are you, Sloane? Over there—eh?”
It seemed to Roger that the crash of the revolver was almost in his ears. Three times Pierre Viotti fired into the blackness, then he paused to listen. Savonarilda peered forward. He fired one single shot and Pierre Viotti’s cry of agony shivered and tore its way through the room. They heard the flop of his falling body, heard his strangled groans, what sounded to be the muttered words of a prayer and then silence.
“Sorry if I robbed you, Roger,” Savonarilda whispered. “I am the only man here who can see in the dark.”
Words framed themselves on Roger’s lips but they failed to materialise. The minutes went on, perhaps hours. No one knew. All that they realised was that the end was coming. Then Paul Viotti made an effort. His voice had become a squeaky falsetto.
“We got—to make sure—Sloane.”
Savonarilda’s voice, heard by his comrades for the last time on earth, choked out his magnificent lie.
“Sloane got his—when the switch—ugh! He is lying—here—corner. I’ll give him two more—make sure.”
Two more shots from Savonarilda’s revolver, extended towards the ceiling, rang out. Again there was a silence, another strange time-cheating interval, then Paul Viotti’s voice fainter now. The words left his lips with a discordant and ghastly wheeziness.
“Pull trap door—whoever’s last. The Wolves have the lorry—Pierre’s dead. Better leave him—”
Footsteps pattered across the carpeted floor, swift and eager footsteps risking their way through the darkness. A moment or two later the sliding back into its place of well-oiled metal, running along a groove. Then again a silence which seemed to have in it now more of actuality. Roger, with his hand upon his chest, leaned his back against the wall and pushed his way along until he reached the door. He hammered against it, then he felt for the catch, drew it and staggered into the crowded passage, at the end of which was light and along which was sweeping life-giving air.
“Tony,” he cried back to Savonarilda, as he drew in a long breath, “come along. We’re through.”
In his shirt sleeves, his hair in wild confusion, the blood streaming from his hands, he forced his way through the group of questioning men, he even pushed Dalmorres on one side. At the touch of his shoulder, the commissaire went staggering against the wall. Jeannine for wild seconds was in his arms, and the glory of it sent the blood singing back through his veins. Her arms were around his neck like a vice, her tears hot on his cheeks. Even then, though, he did not forget.
“Help Prince Savonarilda out,” he cried. “He and I have tricked the whole lot of them. They’re out by a secret way—down at the end of the garden, I should think.”
Savonarilda came staggering into the light. A gendarme supported him on either side. His face, streaked with blood, was like the face of a corpse. His fingers were making feeble efforts to get at his side pocket.
“None of that, old chap,” Roger called out hysterically. “Can’t you see? We’re safe. I’m safe and you’re safe.”
Savonarilda understood and abandoned his efforts. The glimmer of a smile played around the corner of his lips. Then he fainted.
They stumbled into the sunshine and the air and up into the waiting camion, which started away immediately. Terence Brown was half delirious and crying out his roulette stakes. There was blood upon Thornton’s lips and deep black lines under his eyes. Paul Viotti had lost his magnificent colour and his eyes were glazed, but at the first breath of fresh air his vigour seemed to return. He tore off his clothes, drew on the trousers and jersey of an Italian workman, stuck a beret on one side of his head and lit a cigarette. The others weakly tried to follow his example.
“Be men,” he begged, as he drew a jersey over Terence Brown’s almost limp body. “The next few minutes will mean safety or lilies on your chests. Be men now and you can faint for the rest of your lives. Come on!”
He flogged them into some show of energy, then he crawled to the back of the vehicle, looked out and even his stout heart sank. Round the last bend they came racing—two cars full of men in uniform. He saw the glitter of the sunshine upon their waiting rifles.
“How far to Nice?” he asked the chauffeur.
“Seventeen kilometres,” the man replied. “Bad tyres. No go fast.”
Once more Paul Viotti glanced behind at the rapidly approaching cars. They were almost within hailing distance now and his last thought was one of self-contempt. Next time, when he started again, he would give more attention to details. The get-away camion, for instance, should possess a concealed seventy-horse-power engine and invulnerable tyres. Well! He scrambled through the front on to the seat by the chauffeur. With steady fingers he lit another cigarette from the stump of the old one and watched the road. They swung around another corner. The shouts of their pursuers were plainly audible now.
“Lady commit suicide here,” the chauffeur muttered, pointing to the famous drop.
“No fool, that lady,” Paul Viotti replied. “It’s the place I’ve been looking for.”
The chauffeur suddenly felt a hand of iron upon the wheel, wrenching it from his grasp. Then it seemed as though a thunderbolt had hit him, for Paul Viotti flung him with scarcely an effort out into the road—to live or to die, as might happen. He swung the car around to face the precipice, put his foot upon the accelerator—
“We’re for it, boys!” he cried out.
They fell six hundred feet in such a manner that identification was difficult.
It seemed sometimes to Roger only a day or two instead of a week later that he sat once more upon the terrace of his villa with Jeannine by his side and Erskine, his arm in a sling but otherwise recovered, lounging in a chair a few feet away. The orange blossoms had long since been gathered, but there were pink and white apple and peach blossoms in the orchards below, and a mass of Bougainvillæa mingled with the roses which