“Is there a doctor in the building?” he howled.
The man’s teeth chattered as his shuddering glance took in the scene.
“Yes, sir,” he stuttered. “On the ground floor.”
“Get him!” commanded the movie actor.
Women rushed to get wraps, looking about with anxious eyes for the opportunity of making cautious exits. Only Elinor Benton seemed not to think of escape as she wept over the still figure of the man on the floor. But that escape was out of the question was obvious in but a moment when the apartment began to fill with excited, curious tenants who had heard the shot and crowded forward morbidly to see what was going on.
Orders, suggestions, flew backward and forward. Apparently the only calm person in the apartment was Howard Benton. He had walked unseeingly to a bench at one side of the room and dropped on it. He was too stunned to speak. Attempts to speak to him were met with a dazed incomprehension.
Teddy Martin touched him on the shoulder and offered: “I’m sorry, Benton. Is there anything I can do for you?”
The not unkindly touch helped to bring him out of himself.
“Is he—is he—dead—or only wounded?” he asked quietly.
“We don’t know yet,” Martin answered. “The doctor will be here in a minute, and then we will find out. Here he is now.”