“We wasn’t shooting, sir,” a distant voice came up as through a funnel. “There’s somebody way back down in under the porch. Guess they fired accidental-like.”

“Accidental Hell! Go get ’em.”

Apparently there was an attempt to obey his order to the letter, for it was only a matter of seconds when, to judge by the firing, a regular battle was in progress.

“Hi, wait for me!” Sergeant Stebbins, bristling with zealous duty, turned on the room. “You folks stay where you are if you know what’s good for you. I guess we’ve grounded him—and sooner than I thought by a darned sight.”

“Dorn!” Julian exclaimed. “Well, it only goes to show that the first hunch is generally the right one.”

Joel was leaning weakly against the sideboard and sobbing in little gasping breaths like a spent runner. She held her head between her hands to close her ears against the racket.

“I can’t stand any more. I can’t. Oh, I can’t stand it. Turn that shooting off. Turn it off!” she cried.

“It isn’t the radio, darling,” Julian said quietly, putting his arm about her shoulders. “Though I admit it sounds like the Colt Revolver hour or something. What you think is static is being produced off stage by the housekeeper and that maid Lily who are rapidly losing their inhibitions in the pantry. Listen, dear, I do want to see what’s going on.” There was a fresh burst of gunfire. “Please can’t I go to the lattice and be a Rowena to your Ivanhoe?”

“Oh, go along. Go away. I don’t care what you do. Julian, don’t go near that window. You’ll be killed.”

But Julian had taken her first words at their face value.

“A lot of ammunition used and nothing done,” he announced from a daring stand in full view of the lawn. “That man Dorn will have time to dig himself out under the house and make a dash for it by the front gate. The sergeant has drawn off all his men from the western front to cope with this unexpected offensive; and I’m sure it’s an un-Sound move. Did you get that one?”

“Stop it, Julian! If you’re the kind of man that can pun at such a moment as this you aren’t fit to marry. And I never will marry you—never, never,—Come away from that window.”

“Don’t worry, the firing’s all in the wrong direction so far. The police are waiting to see the whites of their eyes. And that’s going to need television, considering where the enemy is in hiding.”

Sergeant Stebbins apparently thought so too. The disturbance came from under the porch of the servants’ wing, and from the floor of the porch to the ground, a drop of eight or ten feet, a fine-meshed lattice enclosed a garden tool-room and formed a walled passage to the basement. Its outside door was closed, undoubtedly barricaded. Stebbins had tried the basement approach and found it closed and sealed. But he had decided on squeezing tactics. Two of his men, stationed in the cellar, were to burst through the inner door at the moment of a supporting attack from the yard.

Without warning Sergeant Stebbins gave his two-shot signal. And the din was on. Julian, really pale, stepped back and held his hand across his eyes.

“Shiver my timbers!” he said, with a deep, trembling shudder. “God help whoever it is. He has pluck.”

The smell of gunpowder had sifted into the room. Underfoot the sounds of the splintering door were somehow more affecting than the actual shots. The tensity and misery of the five in the dining-room were reaching an unbearable pitch. The loss of the restraining influence, though not a happy restraint, of Belknap and Berry, who had gone to the front as staff officers, was tending to break down such morale as had existed. Joel was moaning as if she had been wounded. Sydney Crawford, with staring eyes, was gripping Neil’s arm between her two hands until every knuckle showed white. Neil was shivering from head to foot as a man shivers after too long a swim in cold water.

Suddenly it was the silence, crashing back into place, that seemed deafening, like lightning-cut cloud meeting in thunder. In it, Nadia Mdevani, who had appeared to be holding her nerve, lost it. She pointed, as if at blood.

“Look! In the name of Christ, look there. There’s what spelled Bertrand Whittaker’s death.”

It was a figure eight in the form of two overlapping holes bored in the paneling of the wall at the height of a man’s head. Freshly cut: there was a faint salting of sawdust on the hardwood floor beneath.

It took Joel to break the stillness in the room. With a face like a death-mask she gazed at the dark spot on the wall.

“I know now,” she said. “I know who killed Colonel Blake and Romany and Uncle Bertrand. But it can’t be true. It can’t be true that—” Julian didn’t let her finish. He crushed his hand over her mouth as Belknap came in from the butler’s pantry, with the sergeant and Berry.

“Hush! you little fool. Don’t go saying things. Don’t you be responsible for hanging somebody. Let Mr. Belknap take care of that.” He shook her desperately. “Whatever you know or think, keep it to yourself, do you hear? Do you? Don’t let ’em get it out of you.”

But Belknap had heard enough.

“What’s this you know, Miss Joel?” he said. “Come now, out with it. No, don’t cry like that. I’m sorry. What’s the trouble, Miss Mdevani?” He turned to Nadia as Joel collapsed.

“You should have been barred from detective work on account of your eyes,” Nadia said. “Look.”

“Aha-a-a? So that’s the way the wind blows? We’ll investigate directly. We have another matter to deal with right now. All right, Sergeant, there’s your man.” He indicated Crawford.

Stebbins went to Crawford and touched his arm.

“I place you under arrest, Mr. Crawford, charged with instigating the murder of Judge Whittaker. Your hired accomplices have confessed.”

Crawford looked dazed. Then he swung on Stebbins.

“They have not confessed,” he said. “For they did not kill Whittaker. If this is what is meant by third degree, you can do your damnedest. They are as innocent of this crime as you are. You can do your worst to me; but not to them.”

“The worst has been done to them I’m afraid,” Berry said quietly. “They are both dead. They told us to tell you the account is squared. Whatever that may mean. So I guess you have to go along with us. That gives us one of our men, Sergeant. Now what’s this hole-in-the-wall business, Belknap? Neat work on your part, Crawford? You had things ready for business, I see.”