Complete Fictional Works of John Buchan (Illustrated), page 289
He broke off with an exclamation, for on the grey cloud-bounded stage in which the roof of the Tower was the central feature, actors had appeared. Dim hurrying shapes showed through the mist, dipping over the ridge, as if coming from the Garplefoot.
She seized his arm and he saw that her listlessness was gone. Her eyes were shining.
“It is they,” she cried. “The nightmare is real at last. Do you doubt now?”
He could only stare, for these shapes arriving and vanishing like wisps of fog still seemed to him phantasmal. The girl held his arm tightly clutched, and craned towards the window space. He tried to open the frame, and succeeded in smashing the glass. A swirl of wind drove inwards and blew a loose lock of Saskia’s hair across his brow.
“I wish Dougal were back,” he muttered, and then came the crack of a shot.
The pressure on his arm slackened, and a pale face was turned to him. “He is alone — Mr. Heritage. He has no chance. They will kill him like a dog.”
“They’ll never get in,” he assured her. “Dougal said the place could hold out for hours.”
Another shot followed and presently a third. She twined her hands and her eyes were wild.
“We can’t leave him to be killed,” she gasped.
“It’s the only game. We’re playin’ for time, remember. Besides, he won’t be killed. Great Scott!”
As he spoke, a sudden explosion cleft the drone of the wind and a patch of gloom flashed into yellow light.
“Bomb!” he cried. “Lord, I might have thought of that.”
The girl had sprung back from the window. “I cannot bear it. I will not see him murdered in sight of his friends. I am going to show myself, and when they see me they will leave him... No, you must stay here. Presently they will be round this house. Don’t be afraid for me — I am very quick of foot.”
“For God’s sake, don’t! Here, Princess, stop,” and he clutched at her skirt. “Look here, I’ll go.”
“You can’t. You have been wounded. I am in command, you know. Keep the door open till I come back.”
He hobbled after her, but she easily eluded him. She was smiling now, and blew a kiss to him. “La, la, la,” she trilled, as she ran down the stairs. He heard her voice below, admonishing McGuffog. Then he pulled himself together and went back to the window. He had brought the little Holland with him, and he poked its barrel through the hole in the glass.
“Curse my game leg,” he said, almost cheerfully, for the situation was now becoming one with which he could cope. “I ought to be able to hold up the pursuit a bit. My aunt! What a girl!”
With the rifle cuddled to his shoulder he watched a slim figure come into sight on the lawn, running towards the ridge. He reflected that she must have dropped from the high verandah wall. That reminded him that something must be done to make the wall climbable for her return, so he went down to McGuffog, and the two squeezed through the barricaded door to the verandah. The boilerhouse ladder was still in position, but it did not reach half the height, so McGuffog was adjured to stand by to help, and in the meantime to wait on duty by the wall. Then he hurried upstairs to his watch-tower.
The girl was in sight, almost on the crest of the high ground. There she stood for a moment, one hand clutching at her errant hair, the other shielding her eyes from the sting of the rain. He heard her cry, as Heritage had heard her, but since the wind was blowing towards him the sound came louder and fuller. Again she cried, and then stood motionless with her hands above her head. It was only for an instant, for the next he saw she had turned and was racing down the slope, jumping the little scrogs of hazel like a deer. On the ridge appeared faces, and then over it swept a mob of men.
She had a start of some fifty yards, and laboured to increase it, having doubtless the verandah wall in mind. Sir Archie, sick with anxiety, nevertheless spared time to admire her prowess. “Gad! she’s a miler,” he ejaculated. “She’ll do it. I’m hanged if she don’t do it.”
Against men in seamen’s boots and heavy clothing she had a clear advantage. But two shook themselves loose from the pack and began to gain on her. At the main shrubbery they were not thirty yards behind, and in her passage through it her skirts must have delayed her, for when she emerged the pursuit had halved the distance. He got the sights of the rifle on the first man, but the lawns sloped up towards the house, and to his consternation he found that the girl was in the line of fire. Madly he ran to the other window of the room, tore back the shutters, shivered the glass, and flung his rifle to his shoulder. The fellow was within three yards of her, but, thank God! he had now a clear field. He fired low and just ahead of him, and had the satisfaction to see him drop like a rabbit, shot in the leg. His companion stumbled over him, and for a moment the girl was safe.
But her speed was failing. She passed out of sight on the verandah side of the house, and the rest of the pack had gained ominously over the easier ground of the lawn. He thought for a moment of trying to stop them by his fire, but realized that if every shot told there would still be enough of them left to make sure of her capture. The only chance was at the verandah, and he went downstairs at a pace undreamed of since the days when he had two whole legs.
McGuffog, Mannlicher in hand, was poking his neck over the wall. The pursuit had turned the corner and were about twenty yards off; the girl was at the foot of the ladder, breathless, drooping with fatigue. She tried to climb, limply and feebly, and very slowly, as if she were too giddy to see clear. Above were two cripples, and at her back the van of the now triumphant pack.
Sir Archie, game leg or no, was on the parapet preparing to drop down and hold off the pursuit were it only for seconds. But at that moment he was aware that the situation had changed.
At the foot of the ladder a tall man seemed to have sprung out of the ground. He caught the girl in his arms, climbed the ladder, and McGuffog’s great hands reached down and seized her and swung her into safety. Up the wall, by means of cracks and tufts, was shinning a small boy.
The stranger coolly faced the pursuers, and at the sight of him they checked, those behind stumbling against those in front. He was speaking to them in a foreign tongue, and to Sir Archie’s ear the words were like the crack of a lash. The hesitation was only for a moment, for a voice among them cried out, and the whole pack gave tongue shrilly and surged on again. But that instant of check had given the stranger his chance. He was up the ladder, and, gripping the parapet, found rest for his feet in a fissure. Then he bent down, drew up the ladder, handed it to McGuffog, and with a mighty heave pulled himself over the top.
He seemed to hope to defend the verandah, but the door at the west end was being assailed by a contingent of the enemy, and he saw that its thin woodwork was yielding.
“Into the House,” he cried, as he picked up the ladder and tossed it over the wall on the pack surging below. He was only just in time, for the west door yielded. In two steps he had followed McGuffog through the chink into the passage, and the concussion of the grand piano pushed hard against the verandah door from within coincided with the first battering on the said door from without.
In the garden-room the feeble lamp showed a strange grouping. Saskia had sunk into a chair to get her breath, and seemed too dazed to be aware of her surroundings. Dougal was manfully striving to appear at his ease, but his lip was quivering.
“A near thing that time,” he observed. “It was the blame of that man’s auld motor-bicycle.”
The stranger cast sharp eyes around the place and company.
“An awkward corner, gentlemen,” he said. “How many are there of you? Four men and a boy? And you have placed guards at all the entrances?”
“They have bombs,” Sir Archie reminded him.
“No doubt. But I do not think they will use them here — or their guns, unless there is no other way. Their purpose is kidnapping, and they hope to do it secretly and slip off without leaving a trace. If they slaughter us, as they easily can, the cry will be out against them, and their vessel will be unpleasantly hunted. Half their purpose is already spoiled, for it’s no longer secret... They may break us by sheer weight, and I fancy the first shooting will be done by us. It’s the windows I’m afraid of.”
Some tone in his quiet voice reached the girl in the wicker chair. She looked up wildly, saw him, and with a cry of “Alesha” ran to his arms. There she hung, while his hand fondled her hair, like a mother with a scared child. Sir Archie, watching the whole thing in some stupefaction, thought he had never in his days seen more nobly matched human creatures.
“It is my friend,” she cried triumphantly, “the friend whom I appointed to meet me here. Oh, I did well to trust him. Now we need not fear anything.”
As if in ironical answer came a great crashing at the verandah door, and the twanging of chords cruelly mishandled. The grand piano was suffering internally from the assaults of the boiler-house ladder.
“Wull I gie them a shot?” was McGuffog’s hoarse inquiry.
“Action stations,” Alexis ordered, for the command seemed to have shifted to him from Dougal. “The windows are the danger. The boy will patrol the ground floor, and give us warning, and I and this man,” pointing to Sime, “will be ready at the threatened point. And, for God’s sake, no shooting, unless I give the word. If we take them on at that game we haven’t a chance.”
He said something to Saskia in Russian and she smiled assent and went to Sir Archie’s side. “You and I must keep this door,” she said.
Sir Archie was never very clear afterwards about the events of the next hour. The Princess was in the maddest spirits, as if the burden of three years had slipped from her and she was back in her first girlhood. She sang as she carried more lumber to the pile — perhaps the song which had once entranced Heritage, but Sir Archie had no ear for music. She mocked at the furious blows which rained at the other end, for the door had gone now, and in the windy gap could be seen a blur of dark faces. Oddly enough, he found his own spirits mounting to meet hers. It was real business at last, the qualms of the civilian had been forgotten, and there was rising in him that joy in a scrap which had once made him one of the most daring airmen on the Western Front. The only thing that worried him now was the coyness about shooting. What on earth were his rifles and shot-guns for unless to be used? He had seen the enemy from the verandah wall, and a more ruffianly crew he had never dreamed of. They meant the uttermost business, and against such it was surely the duty of good citizens to wage whole-hearted war.
The Princess was humming to herself a nursery rhyme:
“The King of Spain’s daughter,” she crooned,
“Came to visit me, and all for the sake—”
“Oh, that poor piano!” In her clear voice she cried something in Russian, and the wind carried a laugh from the verandah. At the sound of it she stopped. “I had forgotten,” she said. “Paul is there. I had forgotten.” After that she was very quiet, but she redoubled her labours at the barricade.
To the man it seemed that the pressure from without was slackening. He called to McGuffog to ask about the garden-room window, and the reply was reassuring. The gamekeeper was gloomily contemplating Dougal’s tubs of water and wire-netting, as he might have contemplated a vermin trap.
Sir Archie was growing acutely anxious — the anxiety of the defender of a straggling fortress which is vulnerable at a dozen points. It seemed to him that strange noises were coming from the rooms beyond the hall. Did the back door lie that way? And was not there a smell of smoke in the air? If they tried fire in such a gale the place would burn like matchwood.
He left his post and in the hall found Dougal.
“All quiet,” the Chieftain reported. “Far ower quiet. I don’t like it. The enemy’s no’ puttin’ out his strength yet. The Russian says a’ the west windies are terrible dangerous. Him and the chauffeur’s doin’ their best, but ye can’t block thae muckle glass panes.”
He returned to the Princess, and found that the attack had indeed languished on that particular barricade. The withers of the grand piano were left unwrung, and only a faint scuffling informed him that the verandah was not empty. “They’re gathering for an attack elsewhere,” he told himself. But what if that attack were a feint? He and McGuffog must stick to their post, for in his belief the verandah door and the garden-room window were the easiest places where an entry in mass could be forced. Suddenly Dougal’s whistle blew, and with it came a most almighty crash somewhere towards the west side. With a shout of “Hold Tight, McGuffog,” Sir Archie bolted into the hall, and, led by the sound, reached what had once been the ladies’ bedroom. A strange sight met his eyes, for the whole framework of one window seemed to have been thrust inward, and in the gap Alexis was swinging a fender. Three of the enemy were in the room — one senseless on the floor, one in the grip of Sime, whose single hand was tightly clenched on his throat, and one engaged with Dougal in a corner. The Die-Hard leader was sore pressed, and to his help Sir Archie went. The fresh assault made the seaman duck his head, and Dougal seized the occasion to smite him hard with something which caused him to roll over. It was Leon’s life-preserver which he had annexed that afternoon.
Alexis at the window seemed to have for a moment daunted the attack. “Bring that table,” he cried, and the thing was jammed into the gap. “Now you” — this to Sime—”get the man from the back door to hold this place with his gun. There’s no attack there. It’s about time for shooting now, or we’ll have them in our rear. What in heaven is that?”
It was McGuffog whose great bellow resounded down the corridor. Sir Archie turned and shuffled back, to be met by a distressing spectacle. The lamp, burning as peacefully as it might have burned on an old lady’s tea-table, revealed the window of the garden-room driven bodily inward, shutters and all, and now forming an inclined bridge over Dougal’s ineffectual tubs. In front of it stood McGuffog, swinging his gun by the barrel and yelling curses, which, being mainly couched in the vernacular, were happily meaningless to Saskia. She herself stood at the hall door, plucking at something hidden in her breast. He saw that it was a little ivory-handled pistol.
The enemy’s feint had succeeded, for even as Sir Archie looked three men leaped into the room. On the neck of one the butt of McGuffog’s gun crashed, but two scrambled to their feet and made for the girl. Sir Archie met the first with his fist, a clean drive on the jaw, followed by a damaging hook with his left that put him out of action. The other hesitated for an instant and was lost, for McGuffog caught him by the waist from behind and sent him through the broken frame to join his comrades without.
“Up the stairs,” Dougal was shouting, for the little room beyond the hall was clearly impossible. “Our flank’s turned. They’re pourin’ through the other windy.” Out of a corner of his eye Sir Archie caught sight of Alexis, with Sime and Carfrae in support, being slowly forced towards them along the corridor. “Upstairs,” he shouted. “Come on, McGuffog. Lead on, Princess.” He dashed out the lamp, and the place was in darkness.
With this retreat from the forward trench line ended the opening phase of the battle. It was achieved in good order, and position was taken up on the first floor landing, dominating the main staircase and the passage that led to the back stairs. At their back was a short corridor ending in a window which gave on the north side of the House above the verandah, and from which an active man might descend to the verandah roof. It had been carefully reconnoitred beforehand by Dougal, and his were the dispositions.
The odd thing was that the retreating force were in good heart. The three men from the Mains were warming to their work, and McGuffog wore an air of genial ferocity. “Dashed fine position I call this,” said Sir Archie. Only Alexis was silent and preoccupied. “We are still at their mercy,” he said. “Pray God your police come soon.” He forbade shooting yet awhile. “The lady is our strong card,” he said. “They won’t use their guns while she is with us, but if it ever comes to shooting they can wipe us out in a couple of minutes. One of you watch that window, for Paul Abreskov is no fool.”
Their exhilaration was short-lived. Below in the hall it was black darkness save for a greyness at the entrance of the verandah passage; but the defence was soon aware that the place was thick with men. Presently there came a scuffling from Carfrae’s post towards the back stairs, and a cry as of some one choking. And at the same moment a flare was lit below which brought the whole hall from floor to rafters into blinding light.
It revealed a crowd of figures, some still in the hall and some half-way up the stairs, and it revealed, too, more figures at the end of the upper landing where Carfrae had been stationed. The shapes were motionless like mannequins in a shop window.
“They’ve got us treed all right,” Sir Archie groaned. “What the devil are they waiting for?”
“They wait for their leader,” said Alexis.
No one of the party will ever forget the ensuing minutes. After the hubbub of the barricades the ominous silence was like icy water, chilling and petrifying with an indefinable fear. There was no sound but the wind, but presently mingled with it came odd wild voices.
“Hear to the whaups,” McGuffog whispered.
Sir Archie, who found the tension unbearable, sought relief in contradiction. “You’re an unscientific brute, McGuffog,” he told his henchman. “It’s a disgrace that a gamekeeper should be such a rotten naturalist. What would whaups be doin’ on the shore at this time of year?”
“A’ the same, I could swear it’s whaups, Sir Erchibald.”
Then Dougal broke in and his voice was excited. It’s no’ whaups. That’s our patrol signal. Man, there’s hope for us yet. I believe it’s the polis.’ His words were unheeded, for the figures below drew apart and a young man came through them. His beautifully-shaped dark head was bare, and as he moved he unbuttoned his oilskins and showed the trim dark-blue garb of the yachtsman. He walked confidently up the stairs, an odd elegant figure among his heavy companions.
