For the moment I was tempted to skin over that wall like a cat. Then I thought of Ivan; and, as it got hold of my mind that here was the murderous devil who had just tried to poison the three of us—and one a woman—slipping up to me through the bush, something stronger than the love of life blazed up inside me. I whipped out the pistol and waited.
The crashing noise grew louder and I could hear panting breaths. Then out of a tangle of laurel not twenty feet in front of me burst Chu-Chu, and he reminded me of a boar. He was still in his workman's blouse, and he carried the black straw in his hand. The sweat was pouring from his white face and his lips were drawn back and showed the yellow teeth.
At sight of me he never so much as paused. His hand went to the V-shaped opening of his blouse, and at the same instant I fired into him. Down he went with a crash, then began to scramble on all fours toward the foot of a chestnut tree a few metres away. I fired again and brought a snarl out of him, but he scrambled all the faster. Then a gun cracked to the left of me and I felt the scorch of a bullet across the chest. I spun round, and there was Chu-Chu's mate, the man with one nostril wider than the other. He was standing by the wall and as I turned he fired again and so did another man who had burst out behind Chu-Chu. Then Chu-Chu himself opened up from the ground and I came down in a heap.
It was only a broken shinbone, and from where I lay I got the Oriental chap and another man who
