“I’ll get him upstairs for you, miss,” said one of the sailors.  “He’s going to have the rats.  We’d really ought to have give him to the police.”

“I’m glad you didn’t.  If you can help me get him to his room—­”

“Right-o, miss.  Is he married?”

“Yes.  I’m his wife,” she said quietly.  The sailors seemed to discuss the matter together.  Then one of them volunteered to stay the night, as he guessed Louis would be dangerous.

“I’ll get pulled for it to-morrow,” said the boy, “but it don’t seem right to leave a girl with him.”

“You are nice, both of you,” she said gratefully, “but don’t worry.  I’m quite used to him.  He’ll go to sleep.”

Her instinct was to get rid of spectators, to have him to herself locked away from unsympathetic eyes.  So the sailors went at last.  When she got back from seeing them out Louis was flattened against the wall, staring with horrified eyes at the door, shaking violently.  He had lost control of all his muscles; his face was grinning dreadfully.  She gave a little cry of fright at his dreadful face.  He mistook the cause of it and it communicated itself to him adding to his already overwhelming horror.

“They’re after me,” he mumbled; she could scarcely tell what he said because his mouth could only form the words loosely.  “On the roof!  Germs—­Chinks!  Listen!” Suddenly he spoke with extraordinary clearness, telling her that he had had word that day that the Germans and Chinese had formed an alliance and were already over-running Europe.

“Big air fleet over Melb-Melba!  Alb’t Hall in ruins!” he chattered.”  Chinese torture.  They know I’m biggest en’my in ’Stralia, ole girl.  They got me—­to-day they caught me.  I always knew it—­I knew they’d have me!  But I beat them, just as I beat the Pater!  They know I’m the man they’re after!  They know I’m the son of the Duke of ——­” He mumbled a name Marcella could not catch.  “Tha’s why Pater—­s’posed father—­pers’cuted me all ’long!  He was in their pay.  Can’t you see it?  But I got away.  Only they’ll have me, they’ll have me.  They’re on the roof now!  Marsh-Marshe-lla, can you guard chimney if they come down?  Ole girl, guard it with your body!  Coming down chimney—­Christmas Eve—­”

He began to cry and laugh hysterically.

“When I was li’l kid’—­Chris-mas stockings; I nev’ thought Chinks’d come down chim’ with hot irons—­scalpels—­” And then he described in abominable detail the tortures of the Inquisition all mixed up with Chinese tortures and atrocities:  his reading seemed to have taken a morbid turn for years; the unspeakable horrors he described made Marcella the same quaking jelly of fear as he was, for the moment.  The wild howling of the southerly buster in the chimney spoke to her Keltic imagination of enemy voices; the creakings of the rain-swollen roof, the pattering of the hail above on the iron was like quiet-footed torturers advancing to their work.  Her reason had gone for a moment, overwhelmed by horrors.  She did not stop to ask herself logical questions.  Louis’s voice went on, all on one note, piling horror on horror, disgust on disgust.