A map was spread on the table and methods were discussed as to how best to attain that goal. No. 100 Sidney Street was a chunky, perfectly square block of tenement dwellings. It stood in the center of a square, isolated, easily surrounded. From this point of view it was highly vulnerable to attack. But there were innocent men and women in that tenement. In the event of a gun battle, their lives would be in danger.
The first problem, then, was to get those men and women out without alarming the killers. It was Superintendent Ottaway who suggested that the entire block be surrounded by policemen, the dwellers to be quietly warned of the danger after dark.
Accordingly a large body of men, more than one hundred, fully armed this time, prepared themselves. At two in the morning, when Svaars and Joseph might be expected to be sleeping, they marched quietly to Sidney Street, dispersed themselves about the block. It was part of the original plan to get the dwellers out, then capture the two desperadoes in their bedroom before they could reach for their Mausers.
The occupants of the ground floor at No. 100 were an elderly married couple. A plainsclothesman awakened them quietly, explained the danger and persuaded them to dress immediately. Unfortunately there was a more difficult problem ahead. The woman explained that on the first floor there was a two-room apartment, shared between the two killers and a young woman. That made it awkward. If fighting broke out she might be killed, certainly she would be wounded.
Faced with this predicament, Inspector Wensley propounded a ruse. He suggested that the woman on the ground floor go upstairs, call to the girl and ask her to come down to help her with her husband, who was to feign illness. The woman swallowed hard, marshalled her nerve and went upstairs. The little ruse worked. It began to look as though everything would work out.
All the occupants of that section of the tenement were at last routed, all except one couple, a very old gentleman of ninety and his wife. When they were suddenly awakened, they made an outcry. At that very moment, by another incredible mischance, a policeman tooted his whistle. All hope of trapping the killers in their sleep was gone. Wensley cursed bitterly. Now, there’d be the devil to pay! But how steep that payment would be even the Inspector never dreamed.
One hardy policeman offered to take the stairs by storm and break in on the killers. It was pointed out to him that such a course was plain suicide. The stairs were steep and narrow. At the least sound, the landing would be manned by a pair of Conscienceless killers with rapid-firing Mausers.
The leading police officers put their heads together in a brief parley. It was decided to bring the two men to the window by flinging pebbles against it, warn them that the house was surrounded and ask them to surrender without spilling any fresh blood.
The tenement had been evacuated now. The old couple were got down the stairs by a neighbor. The killers were in there alone, pacing their room like tigers, their claws unsheathed, ready to strike.
Inspectors Wensley and Hallam and Sergeant Leeson advanced into the roadway and tossed a number of stones at the first floor window. A reply, decisive, violent, followed immediately. The window was flung wide. Out of the darkness of the room a Mauser belched flame. Another joined it in devilish duet. A cannonade of shots volleyed from that window. Leeson, furthest in front, reeled backwards, collapsed into Wensley’s arms.
“Mr. Wensley,” he gasped, “I’m dying! They’ve shot me through the heart.”
He fainted. But there was still life in him and for the moment all else was abandoned in the effort to get Leeson to a hospital. The entire street was now under the range of the Mausers. They were silent, but no one knew when they would bark again.
As it was they dared not carry the wounded man down the street. A crude stretcher was fashioned from officers’ coats and Leeson was carried up a ladder and over a roof to safety. Although badly wounded, he was deposited at the hospital in time to save his life.
Just as the stretcher-bearers reached the center of the roof, a second fusillade of shots broke out. It was so fierce, so heavy that Wensley, who had helped Leeson up to the roof, was forced to remain there for the next half hour, sheltering himself from the rain of lead as best he could. Only when answering shots from the other side of the tenement drew the killers’ attention away was Wensley able to descend. He took his last close-range look at the pair, Svaars and Joseph, snarling, teeth bared in the savage grimace of trapped hounds, they stood shoulder to shoulder at the window, firing away as fast as they could reload.
A fresh detachment of police had been sent for. The thousands now drawn to the scene of battle required attention as well as the killers. Panic seemed to have descended on all London. The wildest rumors filled the air. Word had got about that London had been attacked by an enemy country, that the militia had been called out, that thousands were engaged in pitched battle.
The crowd became so violent that more and more policemen had to be summoned. They stood four and six deep.
The vicious firing from the tenement now doubled in swiftness and volume. As soon as one of the attackers came within hailing distance of the house, one of the Mausers were leveled at him, spat its deadly message. A young constable took the chance. He stepped boldly out, gun in hand. The gaping crowd saw the curtain of one of the windows stir, a blinding explosion. The constable’s fingers clapped his forehead. Blood poured through them, over his eyes. He fell face forwards on the pavement.
Another was shot down in the same way. Then another. In all four policemen felt the cold bite of lead in their flesh before that infernal night was done.
The officers in charge realized at last that it was hopeless to try to rush the house without incurring serious loss of life. The killers were not only crack marksmen, but equipped with the most up-to-date guns as well, while the attackers were armed with out-moded makes of pistols such as had not been used since an emergency twenty years before.
It was decided to apply to the Tower of London for a detachment of Scots Guards armed with service rifles. This was an unprecedented, a wholly amazing thing for members of the City Police to do. But it was done and towards ten in the morning, three hours after the siege had begun, the Guards marched through a madly cheering crowd. It was at this point that the Home Secretary himself, Mr. Winston Churchill, appeared, clad in a black derby and carrying an umbrella. He stood on the side lines, directing the ensuing operations.
The guns of the killers had been silent for some time now. The newly arrived Guards took advantage of the breathing spell to place themselves at strategic points about the square. Some climbed to the roofs of surrounding buildings; others crouched in alleys. Scores of rifles were trained on the shattered windows behind which Svaars and Joseph were reloading once more.
Again the firing broke out and this time never let up until the bitter end. The Scots Guards were reinforced by still another detachment, this time the Royal Horse Artillery. Close to a thousand men were devoting all their powers to destroying the two possessed demons within the tenement. The deafening noise was like a weird symphony of war by a mad, modernist composer. The sharp, hard crack of the Mausers furnished the leitmotif, almost drowned by the contra-puntal theme of the chattering automatics, the loud, echoing bang of the old-fashioned pistols. And with this, the ceaseless smashing of glass, the brittle crack-crack as bullets struck against the stone ledges of the tenement.
Farther and farther the crowds were shoved back, but not soon enough to save four of them. The ever widening arc of the bullets’ struck three men, an old woman...
The killers fought a deadly battle. Only the mouths of their guns showed in the windows, their hands jerking on the triggers.