The moment had come to act. Without answering, Paul rushed down the stairs, taking four steps at a time. He reached the bottom just as a massive door was closing, almost barring his access to the cellar.
The Comtesse Hermine was there, in the semi-darkness, motionless, hesitating what to do.
Then suddenly she ran to the other end of the cellar, seized a revolver on the table, turned round and fired.
The hammer clicked, but there was no report.
She repeated the action three times; and the result, was three times the same.
"It's no use going on," said Paul, with a laugh. "The charge has been removed."
The countess uttered a cry of rage, opened the drawer of the table and, taking another revolver, pulled the trigger four times, without producing a sound.
"You may as well drop it," laughed Paul. "This one has been emptied, too; and so has the one in the other drawer: so have all the firearms in the house, for that matter."
Then, when she stared at him in amazement, without understanding, dazed by her own helplessness, he bowed and introduced himself, just in two words, which meant so much:
The cellar, though smaller, looked like one of those large vaulted basement halls which prevail in the Champagne district. Walls spotlessly clean, a smooth floor with brick paths running across it, a warm atmosphere, a curtained-off recess between two wine vats, chairs, benches and rugs all went to form not only a comfortable abode, out of the way of the shells, but also a safe refuge for any one who stood in fear of indiscreet visits.
Paul remembered the ruins of the old lighthouse on the bank of the Yser and the tunnel from Ornequin to Èbrecourt. So the struggle was still continuing underground: a war of trenches and cellars, a war of spying and trickery, the same unvarying, stealthy, disgraceful, suspicious, criminal methods.
Paul had put out his lantern, and the room was now only dimly lit by an oil lamp hanging from the ceiling, whose rays, thrown downward by an opaque shade, cast a white circle in which the two of them stood by themselves. Élisabeth and Bernard remained in the background, in the shadow.
The sergeant and his men had not appeared, but they could be heard at the foot of the stairs.