And as they did so, both of them crashed into a veranda couch which Hade, in escaping, had thrust across the closed doorway in anticipation of just such a move.
Over went the couch, under the double impetus.

By catching at the doorway frame, Gavin barely managed to save himself from a nasty fall.

The dog disentangled himself from an avalanche of couch cushions and made furiously for the veranda steps.
But Brice summoned him back.

He was not minded to let Bobby risk life from knife-cut or from strong, strangling hands, out there in the perilous shadows beyond the lawn.

And he knew the futility of following Hade, himself, among merciless men and through labyrinths with whose' windings Rodney was far more familiar than was he.