It was, I repeat, a busy, winning midnight at The Shotgun. There were doubtless full forty visitors in the cramped room. These were crowded about the table, for the most part playing, reaching over each other’s shoulders or under each other’s elbows, any way and every way to get their wagers on the layout. I was dealing, while to right and left sat my henchmen of the lookout and the case.
As on every evening, I lived on the feather-edge of apprehension, fearing a raid. My eye might be on the thirteen cards and the little fortunes they carried, but my ear was ever alert for a first dull footfall that would tell of destruction on its lowering way.
There had been four hours of brisk, remunerative play—for the game began at eight—when, in the middle of a deal, there came the rush of heavy feet and a tumult of stumblings and blunderings on the stair. It was as if folk unaccustomed to the way—it being pitch dark on the stairway for caution’s sake—and in vast eagerness to reach the door, had tripped and fallen. Also, if one might judge from the uproar and smothered, deep profanity of many voices there were a score engaged.
To my quick intelligence, itself for long on the rack of expectancy and therefore doubly keen, there seemed but one answer to the question, of that riot on the stair. It was the police; the Philistines were upon me; my gold mine of The Shotgun had become the target of a raid!
It was the labor of an instant. With both hands I turned out the lights; then stuffing my entire fortune into my pockets I began to push through the ranks of bewildered gentlemen who stood swearing in frightened undertones expecting evil. Silently and with a cat’s stealth, I found my way in the pitch blackness to the lounge. As I had foreseen, no one was about it to discover or to interfere. Softly I raised the cover; in a moment I was within. Lying on my side for comfort’s sake, I again turned ear to passing events. I had locked the lounge and believed myself insured.
Meanwhile, within the room and in the hall beyond my grated door, the tumult gathered and grew. There came various exclamations.
“Who doused those glims?”
“Light up, somebody.”
Also, there befell a volley of blows and kicks and thumps on The Shotgun’s iron portals; and gruff commands:
“Open the door!”