y 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?"

"The truth, _mon roi_, the truth! Mother of disasters! It is not the
cracksman--it is the real Clodoche we have killed!"

For one moment a sort of panic held them, swayed them, befogged the
brains of them; then, of a sudden, Merode howled out, "Get back! Get
back! The fellow's in there still!" and led a blind race down the
passage to the bar, where they ha