Page:Doughty--Mirrikh or A woman from Mars.djvu/13

 given our pursuers the slip, when my hopes were dashed by hearing their shouts behind us. Klings, Chinamen and Cambodians were pouring into the alley like sheep.

The situation had now grown desperate. My singular companion saw this as well as I.

“Too bad! too bad!” he muttered. “My plans are ruined. See, friend, we’ve made another blunder. Here’s a wall which neither of us can climb.”

I gave an exclamation of disgust, for directly in front of us stretched the wall, a good twelve feet high, cutting off  our retreat completely. We had run into a veritable cul-de-sac.

“It means fight now!” I exclaimed. “I’ll stand by you. Are you armed?”

“No, no! If I was I would not shoot down one of those poor wretches for the world.”

“You must do something quickly.”

“And you?”

“I am not afraid of them.”

“I wish I could help you,” he said, eyeing me strangely. “If you do not fear for yourself, I fear for you. I am the taller. Perhaps I can spring up and catch the top of the wall and so pull you after me.”

He dropped the hand bag upon the ground and leaped up, missing the coping of the wall.

“No use!” he exclaimed. “They are here! May God help you my friend, I cannot—therefore I leave you. A thousand thanks for your kind intentions. Farewell!”

What ailed me—what ailed my man with the parti-colored face?

It would have been useless to ask me then, for at that time even the claims of the Buddhist adepts were unknown  to me.

If any one had attempted to describe what happened as something actually having taken place, who would have  been readier than I to set him down as a lying imposter or a  fool; and yet—

But I find it quite impossible to speak as I could wish. Here is what occurred under the wall at the end of the alley, as I saw it—nothing less, nothing more.

Astonished at the words of my strange companion, knowing as I knew that the next moment must bring me face to face with the mob even then rushing down the alley, I was