The woman stopped, and put her hands over her ears. For she saw, even as I did, the hollow-eyed, mummy-faced youth reach a shaking hand back to his hip.
"You liar!" he said, as his hand swung up with the revolver in it. "You lying welcher!" he cried, in a thin and throaty voice that was little more than a cackle.
He took one step toward the woman in the rose-colored dressing-gown. She was, I could see, much the taller of the two. And she was standing, now, with her back flat against the wall. She made no attempt to escape. She was still staring at him out of wide and bewildered eyes when he fired.
I saw the spit of the plaster and the little shower of mortar that rained on her bare shoulder from the bullet-hole in the wall.
Then I did a very ordinary and commonplace thing. I stooped quickly forward to the end of the table and caught up the nickeled coffee-pot by its ebony handle. The lunatic with the smoking revolver saw my sudden movement, for as I swung the metal instrument upward he turned on me and fired for the second time.
I could feel the sting of the powder smoke on my up-thrust wrist. I knew then that it was useless to try to reach him. I simply brought my arm forward and let the metal pot fly from my hand. I let it fly forward, targeting on his white and distorted face.
Where or how it struck I could not tell. All I knew was that he went down under a scattering geyser of black coffee. He did not fire again. He did not even move. But as he fell the woman in the cap and apron dropped on her knees beside him. She knelt there with an inarticulate cry like that of an animal over its fallen mate, a ludicrous, mouse-like sound that was almost a squeak. Then she suddenly edged about and reached out for the fallen revolver.
I saw her through the smoke, but she had the gun in her hand before I could stop her. She fought over it like a wildcat. The peril of that combat made me desperate. Her arm was quite thin, and not overly strong. I first twisted it so the gun-barrel pointed outward. The pain, as I continued to twist, must have been intense. But I knew it was no time for half-measures. Just how intense that pain was came home to me a moment later, when the woman fell forward on her face, in a dead faint.
The other woman had calmly thrown open the windows. She watched me, almost apathetically, as I got to my feet and stooped in alarm over the unconscious man in his ridiculous welter of black coffee. Then she stepped closer to me.
"Have you killed him?" she asked, with more a touch of childlike wonder than any actual fear.