“They’re coming faster this time,” remarked Stoddard.
“Certainly. Their general has been cursing them right heartily for retreating without the loot. He wants his three-hundred-thousand-dollar autograph collection,” observed Larry.
“Why doesn’t he come for it himself, like a man?” I demanded.
“Like a man, do you say!” ejaculated Larry. “Faith and you flatter that fat-head!”
It was nearly eleven o’clock when the attacking party returned after a parley on the ice beyond the boat-house. The four of us were on the terrace ready for them. They came smartly through the wood, the sheriff and Morgan slightly in advance of the others. I expected them to slacken their pace when they came to the open meadow, but they broke into a quick trot at the water-tower and came toward the house as steady as veteran campaigners.
“Shall we try gunpowder?” asked Larry.
“We’ll let them fire the first volley,” I said.
“They’ve already tried to murder you and Stoddard, —I’m in for letting loose with the elephant guns,” protested the Irishman.
“Stand to your clubs,” admonished Stoddard, whose own weapon was comparable to the Scriptural weaver’s beam. “Possession is nine points of the fight, and we’ve got the house.”
“Also a prisoner of war,” said Larry, grinning.
The English detective had smashed the glass in the barred window of the potato cellar and we could hear him howling and cursing below.
“Looks like business this time!” exclaimed Larry. “Spread out now and the first head that sticks over the balustrade gets a dose of hickory.”
When twenty-five yards from the terrace the advancing party divided, half halting between us and the water-tower and the remainder swinging around the house toward the front entrance.
“Ah, look at that!” yelled Larry. “It’s a battering-ram they have. O man of peace! have I your Majesty’s consent to try the elephant guns now?”
Morgan and the sheriff carried between them a stick of timber from which the branches had been cut, and, with a third man to help, they ran it up the steps and against the door with a crash that came booming back through the house.
Bates was already bounding up the front stairway, a revolver in his hand and a look of supreme rage on his face. Leaving Stoddard and Larry to watch the library windows, I was after him, and we clattered over the loose boards in the upper hall and into a great unfinished chamber immediately over the entrance. Bates had the window up when I reached him and was well out upon the coping, yelling a warning to the men below.
He had his revolver up to shoot, and when I caught his arm he turned to me with a look of anger and indignation I had never expected to see on his colorless, mask-like face.
“My God, sir! That door was his pride, sir,—it came from a famous house in England, and they’re wrecking it, sir, as though it were common pine.”
He tore himself free of my grasp as the besiegers again launched their battering-ram against the door with a frightful crash, and his revolver cracked smartly thrice, as he bent far out with one hand clinging to the window frame.
His shots were a signal for a sharp reply from one of the men below, and I felt Bates start, and pulled him in, the blood streaming from his face.
“It’s all right, sir,—all right,—only a cut across my cheek, sir,”—and another bullet smashed through the glass, spurting plaster dust from the wall. A fierce onslaught below caused a tremendous crash to echo through the house, and I heard firing on the opposite side, where the enemy’s reserve was waiting.
Bates, with a handkerchief to his face, protested that he was unhurt.
“Come below; there’s nothing to be gained here,”—and I ran down to the hall, where Stoddard stood, leaning upon his club like a Hercules and coolly watching the door as it leaped and shook under the repeated blows of the besiegers.
A gun roared again at the side of the house, and I ran to the library, where Larry had pushed furniture against all the long windows save one, which he held open. He stepped out upon the terrace and emptied a revolver at the men who were now creeping along the edge of the ravine beneath us. One of them stopped and discharged a rifle at us with deliberate aim. The ball snapped snow from the balustrade and screamed away harmlessly.
“Bah, such monkeys!” he muttered. “I believe I’ve hit that chap!” One man had fallen and lay howling in the ravine, his hand to his thigh, while his comrades paused, demoralized.
“Serves you right, you blackguard!” Larry muttered.
I pulled him in and we jammed a cabinet against the door.