"You're the logical choice, Will," said Alec. "You know this Smith, after all. The plan is your pigeon. You go."
The Colonel was standing by the window, glancing out now and again as we talked. He said, "One minute chaps. Come here."
We crowded to the window. He pointed down to the drive. Shortly we saw a man run stooping across an open space in the old stone balustrade. The substance of the alien body seemed to float about him like a flimsy cloak of many colors.
"They're all along the front," said Bedford. "If they've covered the back, lads—it's a bit late for our emissary to think of leaving."
We spread out over the house, peering cautiously out of windows at front and back and sides. Then we gathered in the upper hall, as disconsolate a band of crusaders as ever eyed each other with grim scowls.
We were entirely surrounded. The siege was on.
CHAPTER XX
Marion and the doctor roamed the upper floor, watching developments from the windows; when the first rush came, they were to fire down on the enemies' heads. Geoff was ensconced behind an overturned table at the head of the great staircase, so he could at least hear everything that occurred. Alec, Johnson, the Colonel and I were the ground floor garrison; we bolted off the east and west wings entirely, barricading the doors thereto with piles of lumber from the cellars so that if the aliens broke into those sections of the castle, it would avail them little. We had already carried a dozen armloads of bottles up to our quarters from the bins below us, and there seemed little we could do now but wait, there in that echoing empty hall, until our foe took the initiative. This happened about eleven o'clock that morning.
We heard Marion's warning cry, and instantly sprang to our feet (we had each been sitting below a window, trying to relax) and looked out. I was at the front of the house with Alec. I saw some fifteen or eighteen of the monstrous beast-folk come lumbering across the open spaces between the house and the drive. I smashed a pane of glass in the mullioned window with my elephant gun and let fly at the foremost surper. He caught the charge right in the belly, and went heels-over-head backward to lie in a tangle of dark limbs and body, above which the mortally wounded alien grew pale and flickered and went out with a sputter. I let off the second barrel at another and reloaded hastily, thanking the powers that I'd taken this great shoulder-punishing gun rather than one of the lighter and less effective rifles; its load would stop a man even if the wound was not mortal, and I with my double vision was handicapped above my friends. It was often difficult for me to locate the vital points in a running puppet, when the body about him was distending and wavering through half-a-dozen horrible shapes.