"I wish to God Herman would come."
"What d' you want with him?"
"Have you got any whisky?"
"You've had enough of that stuff."
Some one was walking along the street outside. She felt that he was
listening, crouched ready to run; but the steps went on.
"Look here, Anna," he said, when he had pulled himself together again.
"I'm going to get out of this. I'm going away."
"All right. You can go for all of me."
"D'you mean to say you've been asleep all night? You didn't hear
anything?"
"Hear what?"
He laughed.
"You'll know soon enough." Then he told her, hurriedly, that he was
going away. He'd come back to get her to promise to follow him. He
wasn't going to stay here and-"And what?"
"And be drafted," he finished, rather lamely.
"Gus has a friend in a town on the Mexican border," he said. "He's got
maps of the country to Mexico City, and the Germans there fix you up all
right. I'll get rich down there and some day I'll send for you? What's
that?"
He darted to the window, faintly outlined by a distant street-lamp.
Three men were standing quietly outside the gate, and a fourth was
already in the garden, silently moving toward the house. She felt
Rudolph brush by her, and the trembling hand he laid on her arm.
"Now lie!" he whispered fiercely. "You haven't seen me. I haven't been
here to-night."
Then he was gone. She ran to the window. The other three men were coming
in, moving watchfully and slowly, and Rudolph was at Katie's window,
cursing. If she was a prisoner, so was Rudolph. He realized that
instantly, and she heard him breaking out the sash with a chair. At the
sound the three figures broke into a run, and she heard the sash give
way. Almost instantly there was firing. The first shot was close, and
she knew it was Rudolph firing from the window. Some wild design of
braining him from behind with a chair flashed into her desperate mind,
but when she had felt her way into Katie's room he had gone. The garden
below was quiet, but there was yelling and the crackling of underbrush
from the hill-side. Then a scattering of shots again, and silence. The
yard was empty.
The hill paid but moderate attention to shots. They were usually merely
pyrotechnic, and indicated rejoicing rather than death. But here and
there she heard a window raised, and then lowered again. The hill had
gone back to bed. Anna went into her room and dressed. For the first
time it had occurred to her that she might be held by the police, and
the thought was unbearable. It was when she was making her escape that
she found a prostrate figure in the yard, and knew that one of Rudolph's
shots had gone home. She could not go away and leave that, not unless--A
terrible hatred of Herman and Rudolph and all their kind suddenly
swept over her. She would not run away. She would stay and tell all the
terrible truth. It was her big moment, and she rose to it. She would see
it through. What was her own safety to letting this band of murderers
escape? And all that in the few seconds it took to reach the fallen
figure. It was only when she was very close that she saw it was moving.