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.
"Quite fit, thanks. How is it with you?"
"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.