“Everything is wrong!” he flung back excitedly.  “That devil—­that renegade—­that fury, Cleek, the cracksman, is here.  He came to the rescue—­came out of the very skies—­and all but killed Serpice!”

“Cleek!” Fifty shrill voices joined Margot’s in that screaming cry; fifty more dirks flashed into view.  “Cleek in France?  Cleek?  Where is he?  Which way did he go?  Where’s the narker—­where—­where?”

“Here, if anywhere!”

“Here?”

“Yes—­unless you’ve been fooled, and let him get away.  He knows about the paper, and is after it, Margot; and if anyone has come up from the sewers within the past twenty minutes—­”

They knew—­they grasped the situation instantly—­and a roar of excited voices yelled out:  “Clodoche!  Clodoche!  Clodoche!” as, snarling and howling like a pack of wolves, they bore down with a rush on the blue-bloused figure that was creeping towards the door.

But as they sprang it sprang also!  It was neck or nothing now.  Cleek realised it, and, throwing himself headlong over the bar, clutched frantically at the lever which he knew controlled the flow of gas, jammed it down with all his strength, shut off the light, and, grabbing up a chair, sent it crashing through the window.

The crowd surged on towards the wrecked bar with a yell, surged from all directions, and then abruptly stopped and huddled together in one.  For the sudden flashing down of the darkness within, had made more prominent, the moon-lighted passage without; and there, scuttling away in alarm from this sudden uproar, and the outward flying of that hurled chair, a figure which but a moment before had come skulking to the window, could now be seen.

“There he goes—­there! there!” shrilled out a chorus of excited voices, as the yellow-bearded, blue-bloused figure came into view.  “After him!  Catch him!  Knife him!”

In an instant they were at the door, tumbling out into the darkness, pouring up the passage in hot pursuit.  And it was at that moment the balance changed again.  Those who were in the front rank of the pursuers were in time to see a lithe, thin figure—­dressed as one of their own kind—­spring up in the path of that other figure, jump on it, grip it, clap a huge square of sticky brown paper over the howling mouth of it, and bear it, struggling and kicking, to the ground.

In another second they, too, were upon it—­swarming over it like rats, and digging and hacking at it with their dirks.  And so they were still hacking at it—­although it had long since ceased to move, or to make any sound—­when Merode came up and called them to a halt.

“Drag it inside; let Margot have a thrust at it—­it is her right.  Pull off the dog’s disguise, and bring me the plucky one that captured him.  He shall have absinthe enough to swim in, the little king!  Off with it all, Lanchere.  First, the plaster—­that’s right.  Now, the wig and beard, and after that—­What’s that you say?  The beard is real?  The hair is real?  They will not come off?  Name of the devil! what are you saying?”