Again there was silence without—this time a longer silence. Then suddenly there was a crash at the door. A panel splintered out, and the end of a heavy pole burst through. At the same moment figures began to leap into the window on the right, and there was a splintering of glass on the floor above and a heavy thud against the window-sill.
“It’s on in earnest now!” said Freeman grimly, and turned his pistol again at the window on the right.
“Come on—we’ll hold the upper floor!” Sonya cried to Drexel and sprang up the stairway.
They rushed into Ivan’s room, whence the crash had come. The end of a ladder stuck through the demolished window and scrambling up it was a gendarme. Drexel fired; the man fell, and none was so bold as to spring to his deadly place upon the ladder.
The crashing at the downstairs door sounded louder. They rushed back to the stairway. The door was almost down.
“We can hold this floor but a moment longer!” shouted Freeman.
“Come up here, then!” called Drexel. “The stairway’s easier to defend!”
He sprang into a bedroom and dragged out a chest of drawers, which he placed at the head of the stairs as a barricade, and this Sonya reinforced with a mattress which she dragged after him.
Crash! Crash! went the battering-ram.
“Come up!” shouted Drexel.