“Damn you!” roared Caney. “What do you mean?”
“Business!”
No man’s eye could have said which hand moved first. But See was the quicker. As Caney’s gun flashed, a pool ball struck him over the heart, he dropped like a log, his bullet went wide. A green ball glanced from Jody’s gun arm as it rose; the cartridge exploded harmlessly as the gun dropped; Weir staggered back, howling. He struck the swinging door simultaneously with the free-lunch man; and in that same second a battering-ram mob crashed against it from the other side. Weir was knocked sprawling; the door sagged from a broken hinge. See crouched behind the heavy table and pitched. Two things happened. Bullets plowed the green cloth of the table and ricocheted from the smooth slate; bushels of billiard balls streamed through the open door and thudded on quivering flesh. Flesh did not like that. It squeaked and turned and fled, tramping the fallen, screaming. Billiard balls crashed sickeningly on defenseless backs. In cold fact, Charlie See threw six balls; at that close range flesh could have sworn to sixty. Charlie felt rather than saw a bloodless face rise behind the bar; he ducked to the shelter of the billiard table as a bullet grooved the rail; his own gun roared, a heavy mirror splintered behind the bar: the Merman had also ducked. Charlie threw two shots through the partition. At the front, woodwork groaned and shattered as a six-foot mob passed through a four-foot door. Charlie had a glimpse of the crouching Merman, the last man through. For encouragement another shot, purposely high, crashed through the transom; the Merman escaped in a shower of glass.
“How’s that, umpire?” said Charlie See.
The business had been transacted in ten seconds. If one man can cover a hundred yards in ten seconds how many yards can forty men make in the same time?
“Curious!” said Charlie. “Some of that bunch might have stood up to a gun well enough. But they can’t see bullets. And once they turned tail—good night!”
He slipped along the rail to the other end of the table, his gun poised and ready. Caney sprawled on the floor in a huddle. His mouth was open, gasping, his eyes rolled back so that only the whites were visible, his livid face twitched horribly. See swooped down on Caney’s gun and made swift inspection of the cylinder; he did the like by Weir’s, and then tiptoed to the partition door, first thrusting his own gun into his waistband. The barroom was empty; only the diving Mermaid smiled invitation to him. See turned and raced for the back door. Even as he turned a gust of wind puffed through the open front door and the wrecked middle door; the lamps flared, the back door slammed with a crash.
With the sound of that slamming door, a swift new thought came to See. He checked, halted, turned back. He took one look at the unconscious Caney. Then he swept a generous portion of free lunch into his hat and tossed it over the crowning woodwork of the ten-foot refrigerator, with the level motion of a mason tossing bricks to his mate. Caney’s revolver followed, then Weir’s and his own. He darted behind the bar and confiscated a half-filled bottle of wine, the appetizing name of which had won his approving notice earlier in the evening. He stepped on a chair beside the refrigerator, leaped up, caught the oaken edge of it, swung up with a supple twist of his strong young body, and dropped to the top of the refrigerator, safe hidden by the two-foot parapet of ornamental woodwork.
A little later two men sprang together through the front door; a sloe-eyed Mexican and the dwarfish friend of the Australian giant. They leaped aside to left and right, guns ready; they looked into the gambling hall; they flanked the bar, one at each end, and searched behind it.