Chapter XII
The green door in the garden wall had been perforated by a dozen bullets from outside before the first heavy crash came, almost shaking it from its hinges.
Warner had already whipped out his own automatic; Halkett pushed him aside across a flower bed.
“Keep out of this!” he said. “It’s my affair——”
“I’m damned if it is!” retorted Warner. “I’ll settle that question once for all!” And he leveled his automatic and sent a stream of lead through the green door in the wall.
No more blows fell on it, but all over it, from top to bottom, white splinters flew while bullets poured through it from outside.
“You are wrong to involve yourself,” insisted Halkett, raising his voice to dominate the racket of the automatics. “They want only me.”
“So do I, Halkett. And I’ve got you and mean to keep you. Blood is the thicker, you know.”
Philippa came from the arbor, carrying the badly frightened cat with difficulty.
“Is it really war?” she asked calmly, while Ariadne alternately cowered and struggled.
“Just a little private war,” said Halkett. “And you had better go into the house at once——”
“You and I should go, also,” added Warner, “if there are more than two men out there.”
“I saw at least half a dozen beyond the wall. You are quite right, Warner; we couldn’t hope to hold this garden. But I dislike to go into a strange house and invite assault on other people’s property—just to save my own hide——”
“Keep out of range!” interrupted Warner sharply, taking him by the arm and following Philippa around the garden toward the rear of the house.
The back door was iron, armed with thick steel bolts; the neighborhood of the quarry rendering such defenses advisable. Warner shot all three bolts, then passed rapidly through the kitchen to the front door and secured it, while Halkett went to the telephone. The nearest gendarmes were at Ausone.
Linette, the chambermaid and waitress, and Magda, the cook, had followed Halkett and Philippa from the pantry through the kitchen to the front hallway. They had heard the noisy fusillade in the garden. Curiosity seemed to be their ruling emotion, but even that was under control.
“Is it the Prussians, Messieurs?” asked Linette calmly. “Has the war really begun?” Her face, and Magda’s too, seemed a trifle colorless in the failing evening light, but her voice was steady.
“Magda,” said Warner, “the men outside our garden who fired at Mr. Halkett are certainly Germans. He and I mean to keep them out of this house if they attempt to enter it. So you and Linette had better go very quietly to the cellar and remain there, because there may be some more firing——”
“I? The cellar! When Prussians are outside!” exclaimed Magda. “Ma foi! I think Linette and I can be of better use than hiding in the cellar. Linette! Set water to boil in both kettles! I have my dishes to wash. The Prussians had better not interfere with me when I have dishes to wash!”
“Keep away from the windows,” added Warner to Linette. “There are iron bars on all the lower windows, aren’t there?”
“Yes, Monsieur Warner. If the front door holds, they cannot get in.”
Halkett, at the telephone, called back through the dim hallway to Warner:
“Somebody has cut the telephone wire. I can’t do anything with the instrument!”
Philippa, still clasping Ariadne, had betrayed no sign of fear or excitement.
“If somebody would tell me what to do,” she began—but Warner quickly drew her into the office of the inn, which was really the inner café and bar.
“Stay here,” he said. “Those men outside might open fire on us at any moment. Don’t go near a window. Do you promise?”
The girl seated herself obediently and began to stroke the cat, her eyes serenely fixed on Warner.
Halkett had gone to the floor above to lurk by one of the windows giving on the garden. When Warner came up with a box of cartridge clips, the Englishman, filling his pockets, remarked quietly:
“They’re over the wall already, and dodging about among the fruit trees—four of them. There were two others. Perhaps you had better keep an eye on the front door, if you really insist on being mixed up with this mess I’m in.”
“Do you suppose those fellows will be silly enough to attack the house?” asked the American incredulously.
Halkett nodded:
“They are desperate, you see. I can understand why. They know that war is likely to be declared within the next few hours. If they don’t get me now they won’t stand much chance later. That’s why I’m prepared for anything on their part.”
Warner walked swiftly back toward the front, cutting the cords of the latticed window blinds in every room, so that they fell full length.
“No lights in the house!” he called down over the banisters; “and keep away from the windows, everybody! Philippa, do you hear me?”
“I understand; I shall tell them to light no candles,” came the untroubled voice of Philippa.
“Are you all right down there?”
“Yes, I am. But the cat is still quite frightened, poor darling.”
In spite of his anxiety, Warner laughed as he reloaded.
Outdoors there still remained sufficient light to see by. Flat against the wall, pistol in hand, he cautiously reconnoitered the dusky roadway in front of the house, then, leaning further out, he ventured to look down between lattice and sill at the doorstep below. A mound of dry hay had been piled against the door.
“Get out of there!” he shouted, catching a glimpse of two shadowy figures skulking toward the doorway arch.
His reply was a red flash which split the dusk, another, and another; the window glass above him flew into splinters under the shower of bullets; the persiennes jerked and danced.
But the men who stood pouring bullets in his direction had been obliged to drop double armfuls of faggots. One of these men, still firing as he ran, took cover behind a poplar tree across the road; the other man flattened himself against the wall of the house, so far under the door arch that no shot could reach him from an upper window unless the marksman exposed himself.
Standing so, he lighted a chemical match and tossed it, flaring, on the heap of hay piled high against the door; and almost at the same instant a boilerful of hot water splashed through the bars of the lower window beside him, scalding and soaking him; and he bounded out into the road with a yell of astonishment and pain.
The hay, instantly on fire, sent a cloud of white thick smoke billowing along the façade of the house, then burst into flame; but Linette and Magda dashed water on it from the lower windows, and the red blaze leaped and died.
Then, from the rear of the house, the dry rattle of Halkett’s automatic broke out, and the pattering racket of pistol shots redoubled when other automatics crackled from the garden. Thick as hailstones pelting a tin roof the bullets clanged on the iron rear door, filling the house with deafening dissonance.
Halkett, peering out through his lattice into the dusk, ceased firing. A few moments longer the door reëchoed the bullets’ impact; then all sound ceased, the silence still vibrating metallic undertones.
Prowling from window to window, Warner, pistol lifted, peered warily from the shelter of the lowered lattice blinds.
One man still crouched behind the poplar tree; the other, he thought, was lying in the long grass of the roadside ditch.
“Are you all right, Halkett?” he called back through the stinging fumes of the smokeless powder which filled the hallway.
“Quite fit, thanks. How is it with you?”
“Still gayly on the job. I didn’t hit anybody. I didn’t try to.”
“Nor I. Did you ever see such obstinacy and determination? Very German, isn’t it?”
“Perfectly.... They’re keeping rather too quiet to suit me. What do you suppose they’re up to?”
But neither he nor the Englishman could discover any movement or hear any sound around the house. And it had now become too dark to see anything very clearly.
Philippa appeared mounting the stairs, looking for Ariadne who had scrambled out of her arms during the fusillade.
Warner nodded to her from where he was standing guard. She came up quietly behind him, stood for a moment with both hands around his left arm—a silent figure in the dusk, friendly as a well-bred dog, and as winningly unconscious of self. Her cheek, resting lightly against her hands, where they clasped his arm, pressed a trifle closer before she went away.
And while he stood there, perplexedly conscious of this youthful affection, and listening to every slightest sound, suddenly he heard her voice, startled, calling out to him from a bedroom on the east side of the house.
As he entered the room, running, a man outside on a garden ladder kicked in the window panes, drew back his heavy foot, sent it crashing again through the wooden frame, and lurched forward across the sill, only to be held there, fighting, in the grasp of Philippa.
Behind them another man on the ladder was already struggling to fling his leg over the sill; the head and shoulders of a third appeared just behind him, menacing with uplifted pistol any interference.
Already Philippa had been dragged headlong half-way through the shattered window, and the man whom she had seized was endeavoring to fling her down in the flower bed below, when Warner, leaping forward, hit him heavily in the face and caught the girl’s shoulders, jerking her back into the room as her assailant’s grasp on her waist relaxed.
The man with the pistol had not been able to use it; he staggered, his weapon fell, and he clung with both hands to the rungs as Philippa’s assaulter went tumbling down the ladder, carrying with him the man directly behind him. And the next moment Warner had upset the ladder, sprung back, and pulled Philippa with him down on the floor.
A hurricane of bullets swept through the shattered window above them; Halkett, from his latticed vantage, was firing, too.
The girl lay panting beside him, silent, her head across his arm.
“Are you hurt?” he whispered.
“Are you?”
“No; answer me!” he repeated impatiently.
“He was—very rough. I don’t think I am hurt,” she breathed.
“You plucky little thing!”
She pressed her cheek against his arm.
“Are you contented with me?” she whispered.
The shots had ceased. After a long interval of quiet, Warner ventured to creep to the window and look through a corner of the ragged lattice blind. Little by little he raised himself to his knees, peered out and finally over.
The ladder lay there just below in the garden path; the men were gone. And, even as he looked, the staccato noise of departing motor cycles broke out like a startling volley of rifle fire in the night.
For an hour he stood on guard there, with the girl Philippa crouching beside him on the floor. From time to time he called cautiously:
“All well here!”
And the Englishman from the front windows always answered:
“All well here!”
Finally:
“Halkett!” he called. “I believe they’ve cut away for good!”
Halkett presently appeared in the hallway, coming from the front of the house, as Philippa rose to her knees and stood up, a trifle dazed.
“Warner,” he whispered, “a dozen horsemen have just ridden up in front of our house. They look like French gendarmes to me, but it’s so dark outside that I am not quite certain. Will you take a look at them?”
Warner ran to the front and gazed out. The road below was filled with mounted gendarmes, their white aiguillettes plainly visible in the dark.
Two had already descended from their horses, and while one held an electric torch the other was busily nailing a big placard to the front door of the inn. His hammer strokes rang out sharply in the darkness.
It took only a moment for him to complete his business; the electric torch shifted, flashed upward, was extinguished.
“Mount!” came the quick order from the shadowy peloton of horsemen; up on their high saddles popped the two troopers; there came a trample of hoofs, the dull clank of sabres, and away they galloped into the darkness.
Warner turned slowly, looked hard at Halkett, who merely nodded in reply to the silent question.
Philippa slipped downstairs in front of them and began to unlatch the door, as Linette and Magda appeared from the kitchen carrying lighted candles.
Then, when the front door had swung open, the little group gathered in front of it and read on the placard, by flickering candlelight, the decree of the Government of Republican France.
It was the order for general mobilization.
The nation was already at war.