He seized an old-fashioned walnut arm-chair from the next room, and forced it, battering-ram fashion, with all his strength, against the oak panels. They splintered and broke, and under the second blow fell in, leaving only the heavier cross-pieces intact.
Quite motionless, waiting over the sounder, bent the woman, as though she had neither seen nor heard. “White Legs————Yukon Girl————Lord Selwyn”————those alone were the words which the clicking brass seemed to brand on her very brain. In three seconds she stood before the telephone, at the other end of which she knew Durkin to be waiting, alert for the first sound and movement. But she saw the flash of something in the hand of the man who leaned in through the broken panel, and she paused, motionless, with a little inarticulate cry.
“Touch that ’phone, you welcher, and I’ll plug you!” the man was screaming at her. His lip was hanging loose on one side, and his face, now almost a bluish purple, was horrible to look at.
“I’ve got to do it, Mack!” she pleaded, raising one hand to her face. He flung out a volley of foul names at her, and deliberately trained his revolver on her breast. She pondered, in a flash of thought, just what chance she would have at that distance.
“Mack, you wouldn’t shoot me, after—after everything? Oh, Mack, I’ve got to send this through! I’ve got to!” she wailed.
“Stop!” he gasped; and she knew there was no hope.
“You wouldn’t shoot me, Mack?” she hurried on, wheedlingly, with the cunning of the cornered animal; for, even as she spoke, the hand that hovered about her face shot out and caught up the receiver. Her eyes were on MacNutt; she saw the finger compress on the trigger, even as her hand first went up.
“Jim!” she called sharply, with an agony of despair in that one quick cry. She repeated the call, with her head huddled down in her shoulders, as though expecting to receive a blow from above. But a reverberation that shook shreds of plaster from the ceiling drowned her voice.
The receiver fell, and swung at full length. The smoke lifted slowly, curling softly toward the open window.
MacNutt gazed, stupefied, at the huddled figure on the floor. How long he looked he scarcely knew, but he was startled from his stupor by the sound of blows on the street door. Flinging his revolver into the room, he stumbled down the heavily carpeted stairs, slunk out of a back door, and, sprawling over the court-fence, fell into a yard strewn with heavy boxes. Seeing a nearby door, he opened it, audaciously, and found himself in a noisy auction-room filled with bidders. Pushing hurriedly through them, he stepped out into the street, unnoticed.