'Back into the house!' Sybert shouted, 'and bar the salon windows.' He himself sprang back to the threshold and snatched out his revolver. 'You fools!' he cried to the Italians in front. 'We're all armed men. We'll shoot you like dogs.'
For answer Pietro fired the rifle, and the glass of an upper window crashed.
Sybert closed the door and dropped the bar across it. He faced the excited group in the hall with a little laugh. 'If that's a specimen of his marksmanship, we haven't much to fear from Pietro.'
He glanced quickly from one to the other. Marcia, in the salon, was slamming the shutters down. Mrs. Melville and Mrs. Copley were standing in the doorway with white faces, too amazed to move. Copley, in the middle of the hall, with his right arm hanging limp, was dripping blood on the marble pavement while he loudly called for a pistol; and Melville was standing on a chair hastily tearing from the wall a collection of fourteenth-century Florentine arms.
'Pietro's got your pistol,' Sybert said. 'But I've got five shots in mine, and we'll do for the sixth man with one of those bludgeons. I ought to have shot that tattooed fellow when I had the chance--he's the leader--but I'll make up for it yet.'
A storm of blows on the door behind him brought out another laugh. 'That door is as solid as the side of the house. They can hammer on it all night without getting in.'
The assailants had evidently arrived at the same conclusion, for the blows ceased while they consulted. A crash of glass in the salon followed, and Sybert sprang in there, calling to Melville to guard the hall window. The shutters held against the first impact of the men's bodies, and they drew off for a minute and then redoubled the blows. They were evidently using the butt of the rifle as a battering-ram, and the stoutest of hinges could not long withstand such usage. With a groan one side of the shutter gave way and swung inward on a single hinge.
'Put out the lights,' Sybert called over his shoulder to Marcia, and he fired a shot through the aperture. The assailants fell back with groans and curses, but the next moment, raising the cry, '_Avanti! Avanti!_' they came on with a rush, the Camorrist leading with the stolen revolver in his hand. Sybert took deliberate aim and fired. The man slowly sank to his knees and fell forward on his face. His comrades dragged him back.