Sanders placed himself at the kitchen door, revolver in hand, and the other three moved off around the house to the front. Burton, as already indicated by Harris, was placed at a front corner, where he could not only command the entrance but the side Sanders had not been instructed to look after.
"The lower windows are all boarded up on the first floor, so I guess there won't be any getaways through them," commented Harris. "About the only points it is absolutely necessary to watch are the doors at front and rear. Neither of those has been boarded over."
Harris, as he finished, started up the broad front steps. When he was halfway up, the front door suddenly opened and a tall man showed himself. The man was neither Pete nor Whipple, although his face slightly resembled Pete's. The moment the man saw Harris, climbing upward with his drawn revolver, he started back. The policeman made a dash upward, but the door was slammed in his face.
"They know what we want," muttered Harris, "and it looks like they were going to fight. That fellow must have been Hooligan. Well, I don't want to smash in Mr. Caspar's front door, so we'll try persuasion. We've got the rascals bottled up, and it won't do them any good to resist. If——"
The crack of a revolver rang out, and a whiff of smoke eddied upward from one of the barricaded front windows. The bullet whistled uncomfortably close to Harris' head, and even Matt heard the sing of it, although it must have missed him by a foot or more.
"Down, Matt!" shouted Harris, throwing himself over the rail at the side of the steps and dropping under the protection of the foundation of the veranda. "Get into safer quarters, my lad," he went on, as the young motorist landed beside him. "The rascals have loopholes in those window barricades. I wonder what they hope to gain by such work?"
"Hello, you!" called an angry voice, muffled in tone, from behind the boards where the shot had been fired.
"Hello, yourself!" shouted Harris, peering out from his place of concealment. "What do you mean by firing at us?"
"Ye're trespassin' on Mr. Caspar's ground," went on the man in the house, "an' I'm here to protect the property. Clear out!"
"We're officers of the law," cried Harris, "and you're giving refuge to a couple of fugitives from justice. Is your name Hooligan?"