"They seem to have a battery," the inspector said, when we were once more in the hall. "We shall need to starve them out," he observed later. "There's no other alternative that I see. I've never seen such a thing as this before in all my years in the Rutland constabulary." "Starve them!" I exclaimed. "And how long will that take? For aught we know, they may be well-provisioned." "It's the only thing to do, sir," he repeated doggedly. "We can't smoke them out; and we can't very well burn them out; and I doubt if the law will let us shoot them, though they shoot at us." "That may be so," Whichelo cut in quietly. "But I tell you this now-- I'm going to take the law into my own hands." The officer looked alarmed. "You can't," the inspector exclaimed, as if unable to believe his ears. To your average police-officer the thought of a man's audacity to "take the law into his own hands," seems incredible. "You can't, sir," he repeated. "You can't, indeed!" "You think not?" Whichelo said, coolly, gazing down upon them all from his great height. "Come along, Ashton," he called to me. "I'm going to teach a lesson to those vermin upstairs." I followed him out to the back premises, and thence along a passage to the gun-room, the door of which stood open. As we entered, Whichelo uttered an exclamation. And no wonder, for the room had been ransacked. The glass front of the gun-rack had been smashed, several shot-guns had been removed--I remembered there had always been three or four guns in this baize-covered rack, now there was only one--and about the floor were empty cartridge-boxes, their covers lying in splinters, as though the boxes had been hurriedly ripped open. The repeating-gun that had been fired at us was probably the Browning which Sir Charles used for duck-shooting, for this was among the missing weapons. "They intend to hold a siege," Whichelo said, after a pause. "They've provided themselves with a stack of ammunition. This is going to be a big affair, Ashton, a much bigger affair than even we anticipated." Carefully he took down the only gun left in the rack. "This is of no use," he said, looking at it contemptuously. "It's a twenty-eight bore." The outlook certainly was very black. True, there were nine of us. Had we been twenty, however, the situation would hardly have been better. For there, up in that attic, in a position commanding the full length of the corridor, were two desperate men, armed with guns, and provided with hundreds of rounds of ammunition, which, as we knew, they would not hesitate to use. The question which occurred to us, of course, was: how were they provisioned? Given food and drink to last a week, and who could say what damage they might do?