Just then I saw faces pressed to the window (his back was toward the door), and for one moment my mind left his. This was my only danger; but there was a sudden feeling of reaction at the thought of relief and I let go.
“Say, Boston,” he said, “you’re goin’ back on me!” and taking my nose in one hand, he picked up the butcher knife with the other and pressed it against my Adam’s apple. Instantly, my mind was back and controlling his again.
“Don’t be a fool,” I said—it sounded calm—“and kill the only friend you have left.” He subsided.
“Oh, all right.”
I made an excuse to go out in the back, and a sicker youth than I could not have lived to tell the tale.
But I had to finish my job. Although I am very much afraid of any physical hurt, I am not a coward mentally, and you can control any drunken or crazy man if you stay just “one think” ahead. He was looking at the faces and I knew it had got to end. I said:
“‘Doc,’ they’re after us. I think it’s me as well as you. We’ll go through ’em like a dose of salts. You go ahead, walk slowly, and when I say, ‘Now!’—then, ‘Doc’—rush!”
We started for the door, I saying all the time:
“Slow—slow.”
And then when he was ten feet away from the crowd I cried: