The boy’s voice was hoarse with passion. “I sha’n’t say anything as long as you hold that gun on me! Put it down, if you want me to talk to you.”
Brant’s big jaw was set like a mastiff’s. The knob turned silently under his hand and the door swung noiselessly inward. The card room, with its red-brown walls of polished mahogany, was lighted by a single incandescent globe bracketted from the wainscoting at the right of the doorway. A square table stood in the midst. On the farther side of it sat the gambler, glaring up at the intruder, with mingled terror and ferocity yellowing his lean face and burning in his evil eyes, and with his right hand creeping by hairs’ breadths toward the revolver lying upon the table. The boy was on the nearer side of the table; he was half out of his chair, poising catlike for a spring, and at the instant of Brant’s entrance he pounced upon the weapon.
Like a stone from a catapult Brant was upon them, smashing the globe of the bracket light in passing, and while one might draw a quick breath three pairs of hands clutched fiercely in the darkness for the weapon on the table. In the midst of the struggle—if that which has no duration in time can be said to have a middle part—came the crash of a pistol shot. There was a moment of ringing silence and darkness, broken by the clatter of a heavy weapon on the floor and a sudden burst of light from a suspended chandelier. Then, as if the light-burst had been a trumpet call to summon them, the attendants and habitués of the place rallied quickly, filling the small room to overflowing.
The first comers found Harding sitting bolt upright in his chair, with a clean-cut hole in his temple from which the blood was trickling in a thin stream. The boy was shrinking opposite, with his face averted and his hands held out before him as if to ward off a blow. Brant was leaning against the wainscoting near the broken lamp bracket, his arms folded and his gaze fixed upon the upturned face of the dead man.
That was all, save that on the floor at Brant’s feet lay the big revolver with an empty shell in one chamber.
CHAPTER XXV
“SILENCE IS AN ANSWER TO A WISE MAN”
When the rumour of the tragedy ran through the clubhouse the small card room on the second floor filled quickly with a curious throng. Some made haste to ease the limp body of the slain to the floor, and others examined the pistol and tried to dig the bullet out of the wainscot. A brother craftsman knelt to unlace the victim’s shoes, but he desisted at a word from one who had thrust his hand into the dead man’s bosom.
“No use doing that now; he’s dead,” said the objector; and at the announcement William Langford sank back into his chair and covered his face with his hands. Whereat the witnesses exchanged significant glances.
“He’s only a boy,” said one under his breath, and there was a touch of commiseration and rough pity in the comment that ran quickly from one to another of those who heard.
Jarvis, busy with pencil and notebook, was among the earliest comers, writing at top speed and asking questions which no one could answer. But the lack of answers was no bar to a very succinct and complete story of the tragedy which grew under the flying pencil.