He made a ludicrous figure, as he held his revolver at arm's length, craning his neck into the passage, and howling until he was red in the face.

He paused to listen, then renewed his cries, while Armitage, with his back against the rack of pots, studied the room and made his plans.
"There is a thief here! I have caught a thief!" yelled the Servian, now exasperated by the silence above.

Then, as he relaxed a moment and turned to make sure that his revolver still covered Armitage, there was a sudden sound of steps above and a voice bawled angrily down the stairway: "Zmai, stop your noise and tell me what's the trouble." It was the voice of Durand speaking in the Servian dialect; and Zmai opened his mouth to explain.
As the big fellow roared his reply Armitage snatched from the rack a heavy iron boiling-pot, swung it high by the bail with both hands and let it fly with all his might at the Servian's head, upturned in the earnestness of his bawling.

On the instant the revolver roared loudly in the narrow kitchen and Armitage seized the brass lamp and flung it from him upon the hearth, where it fell with a great clatter without exploding.
It was instantly pitch dark.

The Servian had gone down like a felled ox and Armitage at the threshold leaped over him into the hall past the rear stairs down which the men were stumbling, cursing volubly as they came.
Armitage had assumed the existence of a front stairway, and now that he was launched upon an unexpected adventure, he was in a humor to prolong it for a moment, even at further risk.