The startled feeling that had come upon him when so suddenly awakened had gone, and he was perfectly cool and determined. "Well, what's the next move?" he asked himself, as he stood listening to the faint sounds below. "So long as I stay here I'm safe enough, but it seems a trifle white-feathery to let 'em have full swing down there, without lifting a finger to spoil their sport. Of course I can scare 'em out of the house easily enough—a couple of thumps on the floor would do it—but I want a shot for my money. What sort of good were old Bones' 'Emergency Lectures'? I went to 'em all, last winter, and yet here's an emergency—and I don't know exactly what to do with it!"
For a time there had been a cessation in the noises below stairs, but suddenly Pollard became aware of stealthy footfalls, and then the stairs lightly creaked under an ascending tread.
"They're coming up!" he said to himself; "more than one of 'em, too—I can tell by the sound! Well, this campaign's planned itself out now. I'm going to fight on inside lines," and gently disengaging his slippered foot from its encumbrance, he stole barefooted into the outer room, and took his station at the door.
"Now, this is going to be almost too easy; and all because the inspired architect who planned this house saw fit to locate a push-button in the wall, just outside!" thought Pollard, as there came to his ear a subdued whispering which indicated that the intruders had reached the head of the stairs, and had paused for a short consultation. "I'll just try a pot-shot at these gentlemen from inside here; and then—when they break for downstairs—step out, touch up the light in the lower hall, and halt 'em where they stand."
Softly falling back a couple of paces, he pointed his pistol towards the door, and fired. In the confined air of the closed room the report was deafening, and Pollard's ears rang merrily, when—taking it for granted that his visitors must be in full retreat—he sprang to open the door and put into execution the remaining part of his plan of operations. In clumsy haste he groped in the darkness for the key; but at that instant a shot rang out in the hall, and a bullet tore its way through the panel of the door and embedded itself in the opposite wall, making a most unexpected interruption in the programme that he had laid out for himself to follow.
"Stay where y' are—d' yer hear?—stay where y' are," commanded a hoarse voice from without, "while we're gettin' clear, or I'll blow yer blasted head off, yer—" here came a burst of abusive profanity that sent Pollard's blood to the boiling-point.
"All right; but get out lively!" said he, still keeping his hand upon the key, but swinging to one side in order to be out of direct range of the frail door. At the words, a second bullet came splintering through the wood, as if to give emphasis to the remarks which so had annoyed him, and then there followed a noisy rush of feet down the stairs.
Without an instant's hesitation Pollard wrenched open the door, jumped into the hall, and calling, "Up with your hands!" set ablaze the gas in the chandelier below. Midway of the stairs, as he stood in the shadow of the upper landing, he saw the two marauders, who had been checked in their flight by the unexpected burst of light.
"Come—up with those hands!" said Pollard sternly, levelling his weapon, "or I'll blow your blasted—" but the sentence was left incomplete, for with cat-like swiftness one of the men turned and fired at him. But Pollard, heavily built though he is, can be quickness itself when occasion demands, and at the flash of the other's revolver his own weapon spoke sharply, sending a cruel bit of lead ploughing its way through flesh and sinew and bone. With a gasp of pain the man at whom he had fired reeled over against the balusters, and, as his shattered arm fell helplessly at his side, his smoking pistol dropped from his grasp and went clattering down the stairway.
"Have you got enough?" said Pollard, swinging over his weapon, and covering the unwounded burglar. "There's more of the same sort where that came from—if you want it!"