CHAPTER XXVI
ut as Paul strode in his eager foot found no foothold, and he pitched forward, to find himself plunged up to the neck in icy water.
So great was the shock that a little involuntary exclamation escaped him as he spluttered and blew the water from his mouth. A couple of strokes brought him back to the gate again, and as he clutched it he looked up at the silent house.
Even as he did so he caught a little spit of flame from one of the windows and a bullet splashed into the water beside his head. There was another spit of flame, and he felt his knuckles tingle as though they had been rapped with a red-hot iron.
Then Andrieff gripped him by the collar, and with his aid he scrambled back onto the path.
Alexis, who had been quick to see the necessity of instant action, was by this time firing back at the place from which the little spits of flame had come far above them. In the darkness he answered shot for shot.
After the sound of the shots came a complete silence, and Paul, as he stood stock-still beside the gate, which was now swinging idly over the moat, could hear the patter of the water on the path as it dripped from his clothes.
Andrieff, as soon as he had seen that Paul was safe, had run along the hedge, and now he gave a shout.