Kane peered through the broken slat and with a very grim expression drew back for the others. "Look under the trees, there. Is it just dark? Or is it dark with men?"
"Looks like Birnam Wood!" said Herrick.
It was that blackest hour before the morning when darkness takes on weight and bulk so that the eye must carve a way through. But the blazing dazzle of the entrance porch broke and distorted the besieging dark, exaggerating, multiplying the forces that it held. Beyond the brightness of the steps the stone and then the grassy terraces fell indistinct and shallow to the lawns, beyond which, perhaps a hundred feet away, the drive was rather known than discerned; twenty feet or so farther still the wood lay shapeless and invisible but filled by the monstrous darkness as close as with a great tide. There the most straining eye could see nothing whatever; now and again the night came alive with snapping twigs, every grove would wake and rustle; then not a leaf would stir. But through all the intermediate borderland shadows seemed to loom, to creep, dissolve and disappear; then to their more accustomed eyes these shadows began to take on form—they were the shadows of softly moving men, individuals and small groups, unknown persons on unknown errands which carried them here and there but closer and closer about the house. "Queer the boys upstairs don't spot them!" One group passed so close to the end windows that Kane fired at it and produced a commotion which he followed by another shot. There was no response, but from all directions the fringe of figures drew nearer, a crouching, irregular line behind its faggot-like shields of broken boughs. The defenders spent their shots recklessly, now, for the same thought was in all their minds; it seemed to take form from its own apprehension when, as the invaders drew back their wounded, those within became aware of something across the tree-tops, down toward the river; a ruddier dusk, a glow that was not morning, far against the sky.
Close at their backs Christina's voice murmured with an icy softness, "The boathouse! It's afire!" Her tone told Herrick that the telephone had stolen all her weakness, she was strung like a bow; side by side with his her glance strained out and forward as the knots of men continued to advance with velvet stealth. The fire of the defenders ceased. Automatically, for they had nothing left to fire with. "What's become of my fellows?" Sheriff Buckley wondered. The first foam of the tide began to lap the terraces. Christina looked beyond it toward the flames that flared on the horizon. And from that way Herrick, too, heard a new sound, the thudding of a horse galloping clumsily on soft turf. The shadows blotted themselves to the ground. The hoofbeats began to run amuck as though the horse had lost its rider. Hither and yon round the corners of the house shapeless movements hurried, there came the step of a heavy runner and the cursing of a deep voice in some Italian patois. The long, single whistle darted out again and once more there fell that motionless waiting of the profoundly brooding night. It was Christina who first said, "Some one else is in this room!"
As they listened they, too, could hear the sound of crawling. Something was creeping into the room. It was coming through the pantry door which Christina had left open and it advanced with a dragging sound as a wounded beast drags on its stomach. Kane, dropping on it, found his hands in a man's hair. The man sank under him with a deathly groan and now it was Kane who called for a candle. "Nicola!" Christina breathed.
He was making horrible motions with his mouth; Christina found some unspilled wine and thrust the edge of the glass between his lips. "Tell me! Nancy—?"
Kane held up his hand. Beyond, in the pantry, a step sounded—backing from Nicola's trail. Herrick and the sheriff dragged in between them a tall Sicilian whose triangular knife was still wet. The embroidered table-cloth with which they bound him to the piano strained under his renewed efforts to attack the dying man whom Christina still entreated, "Is she with my sister? Is she?"
A hoarse sob raged through Nicola and gasped past his last grin of pride and hate. "You fool of hers! Fool of us all! Your sister? My sister, mine! You think you ever have a sister like that?"
The girl stood above him, tranced and wide-eyed, with distended nostrils; as she turned to Herrick a face which release and knowledge were even then palely lighting the figure of a man darted into the gallery where Herrick had lain; a slim, soft man whose pretty little face was all flecked and sweated with the insane hate and courage which come of insane fear. The Sicilian greeted what he took for reinforcement with a cry of triumph and encouragement; but it was not Nicola, it was Herrick at whom this tremulous assassin, yelling "Spy! Spy! Will you show me again to the Camorra?" extended his revolver. At the same moment, Nicola, turning on his side and aiming upward, shot him dead. The slim, soft figure doubled over the rail and the refined, pretty, convulsed face swung there with open mouth. At this Nicola spat the wine which he had sucked as he lay: "Thus my sister salutes thee!" Then his head knocked back upon the floor and he lay still.
The tall Sicilian, who had watched the action without fully understanding the quick English words, now strained forward, peering with a kind of gratified thirst into Christina's face. He said to her in Italian that was almost a whisper, "You are very fair!"