Behind me I heard firing start up again, though not with any great volume. Below me as I leaned out of the window I saw a number of usurpers come running out of the broken door to see what was happening, then turn and go in again. My attention was not on them however, but on the drive, where the first of a line of motors had already pulled up and stopped.
It was an old pre-war sedan. Its doors opened and six or seven men boiled out of it, staring at the castle and shouting as they moved.
Men! Not were-folk, not monsters, but _men_!
Had the sound of our fight carried to Exeter Parva? No, it could never produce these fifteen autos, decrepit though most of them were. Exeter Parva ran more to hay wagons.
Then the riddle was solved. The second car, a battered Bentley, halted, and out of the front seat climbed a man I would have recognized on a dark night in a cellar.
Dear old drunken, amoral, faithful Arold Smiff! Smiff to the rescue!
"At 'em, Arold!" I whooped. "Inside, son!"
He stared up at me, then waved joyfully. "General! Hoy, General! Gawddam!" He motioned fiercely to his henchmen. "Come on, you one-legged paralyzed barstids, earn your wack! Out arms and forrard!"
Great God, did ever such a motley army advance on such an unearthly enemy? It was like the thieves of Paris defending their city against Burgundy ... had that kingdom recruited its army from the swamps of Hell. From the line of cars swarmed a gang of shabby, dirty, swearing men, as tough and evil looking a mob as ever trod the soil of England. Spawned in the slums and reared on violence, every one of them! Muggers, knifers, coshers, men with scarred faces and broken teeth, men fitting brass knuckles on their fists as they came, men sliding straight razors (the favorite weapon of our underworld) from their frayed sleeves and clicking open big clasp knives, men drawing automatics for which you could have staked your life they had no permits, men who were scarcely more than wild boys and men who had grown gray and bald in crime; at once as undisciplinable and as effective a fighting troop as one could find anywhere. I think I screamed encouragement to them as they came, for I was half-hysterical with relief. Arold Smiff, miraculously, had come in time.