The man put his hands to his mouth and whistled.
‘Ah! It’s a plot, is it!’ Copley exclaimed.
‘Si, signore. It is a plot, and there are those who will carry it out.’
He turned with an angry snarl, and before Sybert could spring forward to stop him he had snatched a stiletto from his girdle. Copley threw up his arm to protect himself, and received the blow in the shoulder. Before the man could strike again, Sybert was upon him and had thrown him backward across the balustrade. At the same moment half a dozen men burst from the ilex grove and ran across the terrace; and one of them—it was Pietro—levelled the stolen rifle as he ran.
‘Back into the house!’ Sybert shouted, ‘and bar the salon windows.’ He himself sprang back to the threshold and snatched out his revolver. ‘You fools!’ he cried to the Italians in front. ‘We’re all armed men. We’ll shoot you like dogs.’
For answer Pietro fired the rifle, and the glass of an upper window crashed.
Sybert closed the door and dropped the bar across it. He faced the excited group in the hall with a little laugh. ‘If that’s a specimen of his marksmanship, we haven’t much to fear from Pietro.’
He glanced quickly from one to the other. Marcia, in the salon, was slamming the shutters down. Mrs. Melville and Mrs. Copley were standing in the doorway with white faces, too amazed to move. Copley, in the middle of the hall, with his right arm hanging limp, was dripping blood on the marble pavement while he loudly called for a pistol; and Melville was standing on a chair hastily tearing from the wall a collection of fourteenth-century Florentine arms.
‘Pietro’s got your pistol,’ Sybert said. ‘But I’ve got five shots in mine, and we’ll do for the sixth man with one of those bludgeons. I ought to have shot that tattooed fellow when I had the chance—he’s the leader—but I’ll make up for it yet.’
A storm of blows on the door behind him brought out another laugh. ‘That door is as solid as the side of the house. They can hammer on it all night without getting in.’
The assailants had evidently arrived at the same conclusion, for the blows ceased while they consulted. A crash of glass in the salon followed, and Sybert sprang in there, calling to Melville to guard the hall window. The shutters held against the first impact of the men’s bodies, and they drew off for a minute and then redoubled the blows. They were evidently using the butt of the rifle as a battering-ram, and the stoutest of hinges could not long withstand such usage. With a groan one side of the shutter gave way and swung inward on a single hinge.
‘Put out the lights,’ Sybert called over his shoulder to Marcia, and he fired a shot through the aperture. The assailants fell back with groans and curses, but the next moment, raising the cry, ‘Avanti! Avanti!’ they came on with a rush, the Camorrist leading with the stolen revolver in his hand. Sybert took deliberate aim and fired. The man slowly sank to his knees and fell forward on his face. His comrades dragged him back.
Marcia, in the darkness behind, shut her eyes and clenched her hands. It was the first time she had ever seen a person die, and the sight was sickening. The men withdrew from the window and those waiting inside heard them consulting in low, angry guttural tones. The next moment there was a crash of glass at the hall window which opened into the loggia, and again the rifle as a battering-ram.
‘Ah!’ said Sybert under his breath, and he thrust the revolver into Marcia’s hand. ‘Quick, take that to Melville and bring me one of those spiked truncheons. We’ll make ’em think we’ve got a regular arsenal in here.’
Marcia obeyed without a word, and the next moment shots and cries rang out in the hall. She had scarcely placed the unwieldy weapon in Sybert’s hands when another man thrust himself into the salon opening. They had evidently determined to divide their forces and attack the two breaches at once. Both Marcia and Sybert recognized the man instantly. It was Tarquinio, the son of Domenico, the baker of Castel Vivalanti.
‘Tarquinio! You fool! Go back,’ Sybert cried.
‘Ah-h—Signor Siberti!’ the young fellow cried as he lunged forward with a stiletto. ‘You have betrayed us!’
Sybert shut his lips, and reversing the truncheon, struck him with the handle a ringing blow on the head. Tarquinio fell forward into the darkness of the room, and the moonlight streamed in on his bloody face.
Sybert bent over him a moment with white lips. ‘You poor fool!’ he muttered. ‘I had to do it.’
The next moment Marcia uttered a joyous cry that rang through the rooms.
‘Listen!’
A silence of ten seconds followed, while both besieged and besiegers held their breath. The sound was unmistakable—a shout far down the avenue and the beat of galloping hoofs.
‘The soldiers!’ she cried, and the men outside, as if they had understood the word, echoed the cry.
‘I soldati! I soldati!’
The next moment a dozen carabinieri swept into sight, the moonlight gleaming brightly on their white cross-belts and polished mountings. The men on the loggia dropped their weapons and dashed for cover, while the soldiers leaped from their horses and with spiked muskets chased them into the trees.
Sybert hastily bent over Tarquinio and dragged him back into the shadow.
‘Is he alive?’ Marcia whispered.
‘He’s only stunned. And, poor fellow, he doesn’t know any better; he was nothing but their dupe. It’s a pity to send him to the galleys for life.’
They dropped a rug over the man and turned into the hall, which was hot with the smell of powder and smoking candles. Sybert threw the door wide and let the moonlight stream in. It was a queer sight it looked upon. Copley, weak from his wound, had collapsed into a tall carved chair, while the two ladies, in blood-stained evening dresses, were anxiously bending over him. Melville, with the still smoking revolver in his hand and a jewelled dagger sticking from his pocket, was frenziedly inquiring, ‘For the Lord’s sake, has any one got any whisky?’ Gerald, in his white nightgown and little bare legs, was howling dismally on the stairway; while Granton, from the landing, looked grimly down upon the scene with the air of an avenging Nemesis. The next moment the soldiers had come trooping in, and everything was a babel of cries and ejaculations and excited questions. In the midst of the confusion Mrs. Copley suddenly drew herself up and pronounced her ultimatum.
‘On the very first steamer that sails, we are going back to America to live!’
Marcia uttered a little hysterical laugh, and Melville joined in.
‘And I think you’d better go with them, my boy,’ he said, laying a grimy hand on Sybert’s arm. ‘I suspect that your goose is pretty thoroughly cooked in Italy.’
Sybert shook the elder man’s hand off, with a short laugh that was not very mirthful.
‘I’ve suspected that for some time.’ And he turned on his heel and strode out to the loggia, where he began talking with the soldiers.
‘Poor fellow!’ Melville glanced at Marcia and shook his head. ‘It’s a bad dose!’ he murmured. ‘I have a curiosity to see with what grace he swallows it.’
Marcia looked after Sybert with eyes that were filled with sympathy. She realized that it was a bitter time for him, though she did not know just why; but she had seen the spasm that crossed his face at Tarquinio’s cry, ‘You have betrayed us!’ She half started to follow him, and then she drew back quickly. Through the open door she had caught a glimpse of Sybert and a soldier bending over the Camorrist’s body. They had opened his shirt in front, and she had seen the purple crucifix covered with blood. She leaned back against the wall, faint at the sight. It seemed as if the impressions of this dreadful day could never leave her!
CHAPTER XXV
Mr. Copley’s wounded arm was bandaged the best that they could manage and a soldier dispatched to Palestrina for a doctor. Gerald was put to bed and quieted for the third time that night, and the excitement in the house was subsiding to a murmur when Marcia came downstairs again. Melville met her by the door of the loggia, evidently anxious that she should not go out. She had no desire to; she had seen more than she cared to see.