Chapter XXI

I truly believe that that day was the longest and worst I ever managed to live through.

The aliens who ringed the castle did not attack in force: but they maintained a kind of sullen, dangerous watchfulness over the place, and every time one of us showed himself at a window, a rifle cracked and a slug spread itself on a wall nearby or buried itself in the ceiling above him.

"What are they doing?" Marion asked me again and again. "Why are they waiting?" And I could not tell her.

The night came, but our sleep was no more than an occasional leaden doze which left us unrefreshed, with gummy aching eyes and minds gnawed by worry.

Where in hell was Geoff?

Had they slipped in and abducted him, right out from beneath our noses? Hardly. The doors and windows were still bolted.

Had he left of his own free will? And if so, _how_? And why?

"The place is haunted," Alec had said somberly at dinner; and in my heart I half agreed with him.

That night we had renewed our barricades at the head of the stairs, and kept our watches as before. About six in the morning I was starting to tear down the lumber once more when a hand was laid on my arm, and the Colonel, his face gray and drawn, said, "Leave 'em, boy."

"Why?"

"Come and look out the window. They've gathered. There must be two hundred if there's a one. We can't hold that great hall against them when they come. We've got to make a stand up here."

It was true. The groves and the unkempt lawns swarmed with them, their loathsome bodies all gay and shining in the sunlight.

"Still clerks and shopkeepers?" I asked.

"No, this is a rather less appetizing lot. More like the mugs you were always spying on in pubs," said Alec. "They look--well, pretty competent."

"We'll give them a reception," said the Colonel grimly. "Spread out, front and back, and fire into the brown of 'em when I give the word. Empty your rifles and then your revolvers as fast as you can; the fools are bunched so that we can't miss. There's not a military man in the lot, I'll be bound."

* * * * *

I went to the farthest corner of the east wing, many rooms away from our G.H.Q. by the main stairwell: I swung open a window as gently as possible, then waited for the Colonel's signal. I imagined he would fire his 450-400. I was forgetting that for development of the lungs there's nothing to compare with half a lifetime of commanding the sepoys of India. To say merely that he shouted "Fire!" in a stentorian voice is like saying that the Last Trump will be rather loud. His bellow rattled the beams of oak in their stone sockets. Even the aliens on the lawns turned to look in his direction.

I thrust out the muzzle of my pachyderm blaster and let it speak twice in rapid fire; dropped it, threw down on the milling crew with my two Colts, and picked off three more usurpers before they could gather their wits and make for the groves. When the guns were empty I counted seven bodies. If my friends had had as good luck, I thought exultantly, the foe had lost more than thirty of their number! I found subsequently that our total for the surprise attack was twenty-four or -five.

This decimation must have shaken them to their toes, for the morning wore on and no assault came.

Johnson brought each of us a bowl of soup and a plate of biscuits at noon. Staying at my post in the eastern corner, I watched the trees and thought of Geoff Exeter.

Could that have been Geoff whom I followed down the secret stair two nights since? Certainly it was not one of _them_; and Geoff of all people would have known of its existence, for he had spent his childhood here in the castle. If it was him, where had he gone from the great hall? And what had moved in the black shadows of the fireplace? Had Geoff been spirited away by ghosts? I could credit anything, after these past months of hellish experience.

As I was chewing my last biscuit, firing broke out at the front of the castle; first a single shot or two, then heavy volleys, as though all my friends were engaged in it. I shifted from foot to foot, wondering what to do. Finally, after a searching look at the groves and lawns where nothing moved, I ran for the hallway.

* * * * *

Marion and Alec were shooting from the windows of our sitting room. I dashed in, said foolishly, "What is it, an attack?" and looking out saw line after line of the beast-folk advancing rapidly on the castle, their numbers not bunched this time but spread out so that they presented more difficult targets. I judged them to be at least two hundred and fifty strong. "Shoot low," I snapped, even as I brought the elephant gun to bear on a blue octopus-like brute and sent him sprawling. "Remember you're aiming downhill."

The thunder of a battering-ram smiting at the big door seemed to jar the floor beneath our feet. It ceased in a moment, and I heard the Colonel bawl, "They're in! Come to the stairs!"

We gathered there behind our lumber-and-furniture barricade, six against an army. We did not say anything coherent, I believe, but continually shouting encouraging noises to one another, we fired and fired until our weapons grew hot to the touch. The beasts were thronging the hall below us, converging on the stairs and tearing at the mass of impeding obstacles which the Colonel and John had strewn down the length of the steps that morning. It was at once a hideous and a thrilling sight. The monsters were swarming up at us, a foot at a time, clawing at planks and barrels and broken chairs, hurling them back onto their comrades' heads; none of them seemed to be firing at us, though in the heat of battle I may not have noticed if they had. It looked to me as if they were too infuriated to bother with guns. Like so many enraged baboons, they wanted to get at us and tear us to bloody tatters with their hands and teeth alone. As they fought upward, those in the fore exploded soundlessly, horribly, and quickly, like multicolored bags of gaudy rubber stabbed with sharp knives, leaving their dead robots to roll and flounder to the bottom again. I had run out of ammo for the big gun; howling with a kind of mad glee, I blazed away into the thick of them with my twin Colts, putting my bullets into the dark human forms within the hybrid monsters. The castle rocked and echoed with the fury of the fight. Cordite and spilt blood reeked in my nostrils. One of the devils, a rhinocerous-brute with a towering ivory-tinted "horn" that wobbled as he moved, came scrambling on all fours up over the mess of wreckage toward us; I took him for my very own, waiting until he was within a yard of me and then presenting both my revolvers to his face and pulling the triggers.

My guns were empty!

* * * * *

Before I could recover from my surprise, he had gathered himself--he must have been an especially athletic fellow--and leaped straight for me. I went down under his weight, flailing my arms wildly. I was unprepared for a scuffle and for a few seconds could do nothing to defend myself properly. Before I had rallied, the body of the creature went limp and sagged down onto me, while his true form flickered away into nothingness. I struggled out from under him to see old Johnson pulling back a bloodied pig-sticker. He grinned at me complacently. "Still a trace of the old skill left, Mister Chester!"

They were the last words he ever spoke. A volley crashed out below us, and he swayed and fell at full length, like an ancient tree cut at the roots. I knelt over him, and saw that he was dead.

I peered over the railing, while feverishly loading my guns, and saw that we were nearly done; for the aliens, sacrificing scores of their men in that wild attack, had almost cleared the staircase. Now they were pulling back the corpses and the last of the impeding furniture, and only our barricade at the top remained between them and our garrison of five. Any of them who were in good shape and in the least degree agile could clear this barrier with ease. I knew we were almost done.

Now there occurred one of those queer, inexplicable pauses that come in the thick of the wildest battles, when the men of both sides seem to draw back an imperceptible inch or two, cease firing and yelling, suck in a deep swift breath, and tauten their muscles for a final foray or a last furious defense. The usurpers in the hall and on the stairs fell silent as though by prearrangement; while we humans, as it chanced, were all either loading or taking careful sights over our gun barrels.

And in that comparative silence, broken only by the susurrus of heavy breathing, we all suddenly pricked up our ears and listened. The pause lengthened, by a sort of unspoken mutual agreement between the two parties. I looked at the Colonel, and he gestured imperiously toward the nearest room that faced on the drive. I flew into it, making for a window.

Because there had come to us the sound of many automobiles, driven at high speed down the country lane that led to Exeter Castle.