CHAPTER XXII
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!"