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Updated: May 6, 2025
As he stood there, proud but respectful, his flaming red beard falling over his broad chest, he looked like some Viking who had just stepped out of an old myth. "Alexander Andrieff, our overseer," Peter explained, and the man bowed low to Paul. "And now, Natalie, if you will entertain Sir Paul for the next hour he will perhaps overlook my rudeness."
It burst wide open and sent him sprawling onto his face in the passage. As he lay there half-stunned his pulses throbbed again as the noise which came from the main entrance told him that Alexis and Andrieff were making good use of the gate.
I wonder if they really have left the house entirely empty." Just then Andrieff joined him, and putting their shoulders against the rear door that opened into the garden, they easily forced an entrance. With drawn revolvers they leaped inside, and began to prowl about the place. Finally in a wardrobe on an upper floor they discovered a servant hiding.
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.
They lifted his sagging body to a couch and then Andrieff, who was something of an amateur surgeon, examined him carefully. The bullet had ploughed a furrow just above his temple; but after some probing Andrieff decided it had passed on without penetrating the skull. His heart was still beating faintly and they forced spirits between his lips until after a time he revived.
He dragged himself up to his knees, still clutching his revolver, and at the same moment the outer door gave up its resistance, and Alexis and Andrieff came headlong into the hall-way. He heard them give a warning shout as he struggled to his feet, steadying himself by the pillars of the banisters.
"By the ever-to-be-praised apostles!" swore Andrieff, his red beard wagging in impotent rage, "the devils have turned the horses loose on the steppe. Every box is empty!" It was true and almost frantic with distress Peter and the overseer had been forced to turn back into the house to wait till day-break. Well! there was work there for them while they waited.
In the meantime Andrieff and the lad had picked up Madame Estelle and carried her into the same room, and now she lay on the couch, her face growing grey with the shadows of death, and her breath coming fast and feebly. Her eyes stared up at the ceiling with an intense and horrible fixity.
As they dragged him out at first he showed fight, but one blow from Andrieff's sledge-like fist beat him into submission, and in another moment they had him pinned against the wall. "Tell me where your master is," said Andrieff in a fierce voice. The man remained silent. "Tell me," he said again, "and tell me quickly. Tell me at once or you will regret it."
"This is the gate we want," he cried. But a third spit of flame came from the darkness overhead, and Paul heard the overseer swearing softly under his breath. Whoever their unknown assailant might be, he was no mean marksman. Paul and Alexis ran to Andrieff's aid. "What's up?" asked Paul. "Nothing," answered Andrieff, and he got the gate opened.
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