As I lifted that firearm from my pocket I was no longer a reasoning human being. At the same time I felt this red flash of rage through my body, I also felt the clutch about my waist relax. The big man behind me was ejaculating a single word. It was "Creegan!"
Why that one shout should have the debilitating effect on Creegan which it did, I had no means of knowing. But I saw the sweat-stained and blood-marked face of my colleague suddenly change. His eyes stared stupidly, his jaw fell, and he stood there, panting and open-mouthed, as though the last drop of courage had been driven out of his body.
I felt that he was giving up, that he was surrendering, even before I saw him let the man he had been holding fall away from him. But I remembered the revolver in my hand and the ignominies I had suffered. And again I felt that wave of something stronger than my own will, and I knew that my moment had come.
I had the revolver at half-arm, with its muzzle in against the body crushing mine, when Creegan's voice, sharp and short as a bark, arrested that impending finger-twitch.
"Stop!" he cried, and the horror of his voice puzzled me.
"Why?" I demanded in a new and terrible calm. But I did not lower my revolver.
"Stop that!" he shouted, and his newer note, more of anger than fear, bewildered me a bit.
"Why?"
But Creegan, as he caught at the coat collar of the man called Redney, did not answer my repeated question. Instead, he stared at the man beside me.
"Well, I'll be damned!" he finally murmured.