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.
"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.