A stair well plunged downward into shadowy depths just ahead; he stole forward and looked over; carpeted steps vanished into the darkness below.
Doors, all locked, faced him everywhere; he ran along them, trying each as he passed; came to an angle of solid wall, stepped around it, pistol extended; and it was a miracle he was not startled into pulling trigger when a door was torn open in his very face, and a figure, dark against the fiery sunset framed by a window, sprang forward.
"Warner, _mon ami_! _Me voici_!" she cried joyously, flinging both arms around his neck; but he stood white and trembling with the nearness of her destruction at his hands, holding the shaking pistol wide from her body and unable to utter a word.
And as he stood there, one arm around her thin body, somewhere below and behind him a door burst open and there came a muffled rush of feet up the stairway from the darkness below.
He pushed her violently away from him, but before he could turn and spring to the stairhead, three men leaped into the passage, their weapons spitting red flashes through the dusky corridor; and he jumped backward dragging Philippa with him into the room behind them, slammed the door, and bolted, chained, and locked it.
Outside, Asticot, Squelette, and Hoffman stood close to the door and poured bullets through it at close range. The stream of lead tore the papered plaster wall, opposite to tatters; but the door was as massive as the one he had tried to force with his shoulder; two great bars of metal bolted it, a heavy chain further secured it, and the key remained in the lock.
But steel-jacketed bullets still pierced the wood, stripping splinters from the inside and mangling the opposite wall until the gay wall paper hung in strips, and the whole room swam in a haze of drifting white dust.
Edging along, his body flattened against the north wall of the empty room, and drawing Philippa after him, he cautiously approached the door which he had tried to force; and heard Wildresse whispering to somebody outside. No wonder he had not been able to force it; the bolts and chains that held it were exactly like those which secured the other door.
He placed his lips close to Philippa’s ear: