Durkin repeated his command.
"Furniture-moving is not my vocation!" answered Keenan, folding his arms.
As Durkin sprang forward, there was no mistaking his meaning.
"I'll count ten," he said, white-lipped. "Unless the table goes out, you go out!" And he began counting, silently, numeral by numeral.
"Well, if you insist!" said Keenan, with a shrug.
Even as Keenan, at the menace of his reiterated command to hurry, threw open the guard door, Durkin was wondering, in his feverish activity of mind, just how soon MacNutt's next move would come, and just how and where he would strike.
The answer to that question came more quickly than he had expected. And it came grimly, and in a manner most unlooked for.
For even as the reluctant Keenan stooped over the heavy table, not ten feet from the shaft, the elevator cage descended. It flashed by the open door without stopping on its hurried course. But as it winged past that square of open light a revolver shot rang out and reëchoed through the room.
Durkin, peering across the curling smoke, saw Keenan pitch forward on his hands, struggle and thrash to his feet once more, like a wounded rabbit. Then he fell again, prone on his face, close beside the shaft door. There he lay, breathing in little gurgles.
Durkin, with little beads of sweat on his pallid face, realized what it meant. That flying shot had been intended for him. MacNutt, in that desperate and hurried and unreasoning last chance, had delivered his blow, but had been mistaken in his man!