CHAPTER XXXV
THE ATTACK
I rushed with Strode to the doorway, and for a moment could discern nothing in the intense darkness. But just as I was beginning to hope it might be a false alarm a flash of lightning showed me a man on horseback in the road some twenty yards away. It was hardly probable that he saw us in the same instant; anyhow, we could hear no voice above the raging of the storm. Without another moment’s delay we set ourselves to close the door, which hung to its post by a single hinge.
“Stay, for Heaven’s sake!” Strode cried suddenly. “The pistols and cartridges are in the carriage. Without them we are dead men.”
In another instant he had forced the door a little way open again and dashed out. It was an anxious twenty seconds for me, but in that time he was back with our second revolvers and the ammunition bags.
“Now,” he said, “take the Fräulein upstairs while I barricade this as well as I can.”
She had heard him, and, as I turned, was already climbing the crazy steps that led to the upper floor.
“It is terrible,” she said, trying, as I could see, to master her agitation, “if all you have done for me is to end in failure.”
“Let us hope not,” I replied. “Strode may be mistaken. It is hardly conceivable——”