But the Persian left him no time for reflection. Telling Raoul to stay where he was, he ran up a few steps of the staircase which they had just left and then returned.
"How stupid of us!" he whispered. "We shall soon have seen the end of those men with their lanterns. It is the firemen going their rounds."[4]
The two men waited five minutes longer. Then the Persian took Raoul up the stairs again; but suddenly he stopped him with a gesture. Something moved in the darkness before them.
"Flat on your stomach!" whispered the Persian.
The two men lay flat on the floor.
They were only just in time. A shade, this time carrying no light, just a shade in the shade, passed. It passed close to them, near enough to touch them.
They felt the warmth of its cloak upon them. For they could distinguish the shade sufficiently to see that it wore a cloak which shrouded it from head to foot. On its head it had a soft felt hat…
It moved away, drawing its feet against the walls and sometimes giving a kick into a corner.
"Whew!" said the Persian. "We’ve had a narrow escape; that shade knows me and has twice taken me to the managers' office."
"Is it some one belonging to the theater police?" asked Raoul.
"It’s some one much worse than that!" replied the Persian, without giving any further explanation.[5]
"It’s not… he?"
"He?… If he does not come behind us, we shall always see his yellow eyes! That is more or less our safeguard to–night. But he may come from behind, stealing up; and we are dead men if we do not keep our hands as though about to fire, at the level of our eyes, in front!"
The Persian had hardly finished speaking, when a fantastic face came in sight… a whole fiery face, not only two yellow eyes!
Yes, a head of fire came toward them, at a man’s height, but with no body attached to it. The face shed fire, looked in the darkness like a flame shaped as a man’s face.
"Oh," said the Persian, between his teeth. "I have never seen this before!… Pampin was not mad, after all: he had seen it!… What can that flame be? It is not HE, but he may have sent it!… Take care!… Take care! Your hand at the level of your eyes, in Heaven’s name, at the level of your eyes!… know most of his tricks… but not this one… Come, let us run… it is safer. Hand at the level of your eyes!"
And they fled down the long passage that opened before them.
After a few seconds, that seemed to them like long minutes, they stopped.
"He doesn’t often come this way," said the Persian. "This side has nothing to do with him. This side does not lead to the lake nor to the house on the lake… But perhaps he knows that we are at his heels … although I promised him to leave him alone and never to meddle in his business again!"
So saying, he turned his head and Raoul also turned his head; and they again saw the head of fire behind their two heads. It had followed them. And it must have run also, and perhaps faster than they, for it seemed to be nearer to them.
At the same time, they began to perceive a certain noise of which they could not guess the nature. They simply noticed that the sound seemed to move and to approach with the fiery face. It was a noise as though thousands of nails had been scraped against a blackboard, the perfectly unendurable noise that is sometimes made by a little stone inside the chalk that grates on the blackboard.
They continued to retreat, but the fiery face came on, came on, gaining on them. They could see its features clearly now. The eyes were round and staring, the nose a little crooked and the mouth large, with a hanging lower lip, very like the eyes, nose and lip of the moon, when the moon is quite red, bright red.
How did that red moon manage to glide through the darkness, at a man’s height, with nothing to support it, at least apparently? And how did it go so fast, so straight ahead, with such staring, staring eyes? And what was that scratching, scraping, grating sound which it brought with it?
