When I rejoined the others I noticed that the sound of firing no longer came up the hill, and that the patter of rain was lighter, and a grey streak of coming daylight showed under a drawn blind.
I was buttoning my slicker when the knocker rang on the front door. Russian words came through, and the young Russian I had met on the beach came in.
“Aleksandr, you’re—” the stalwart older woman screamed when she saw the blood on his cheek, and fainted.
He paid no attention to her at all, as if he was used to having her faint.
“They’ve gone in the boat,” he told me while the girl and two men servants gathered up the woman and laid her on an ottoman.
“How many?” I asked.
“I counted ten, and I don’t think I missed more than one or two, if any.”
“The men I sent down there couldn’t stop them?”
He shrugged.
“What would you? It takes a strong stomach to face a machine gun. Your men had been cleared out of the buildings almost before they arrived.”
The woman who had fainted had revived by now and was pouring anxious questions in Russian at the lad. The princess was getting into her blue cape. The woman stopped questioning the lad and asked her something.
“It’s all over,” the princess said. “I am going to view the ruins.”
That suggestion appealed to everybody. Five minutes later all of us, including the servants, were on our way downhill. Behind us, around us,