“Suds!” said Jimmie Dale laconically.
Again Jimmie Dale’s eyes made a circuit of the place, failed to identify the person of one Kid Greer, and, giving up the attempt, rested speculatively instead on Klanner’s back. Yes, he could quite fully understand why the Tocsin could not have warned Klanner to beware, for instance, of Kid Greer. Such a warning, apart from keeping Hunchback Joe from planting the evidence, would even have defeated its own end—for, even to save Klanner, the game had to be played out as Hunchback Joe had planned it. They meant to “get” Klanner, and if not here at Baldy Jack’s, then somewhere else. She knew what they meant to do here—she might not know when, or how, or where they would make the attempt if they had been forced to change their plans.
Jimmie Dale tossed a coin on the table, as the waiter set down a glass of beer in front of him—and then, over the top of the glass, Jimmie Dale resumed his scrutiny of the hall. Directly behind him was a back entrance that opened on a lane at the rear of the building; and between himself and the entrance was only one table, which was unoccupied. Jimmie Dale, playing with his match box, as he lighted another cigarette, dropped the box, stooped to pick it up—and drew his chair unostentatiously nearer to Klanner.
It was ten o’clock now, time that—yes, the game was on—now! A man, that he recognised as one of the Mole’s gunmen, had dropped into a seat a couple of tables away from Klanner, where there was a clear space between the two men. There was a sudden jostling among the dancers on the floor—then an oath, rising high above the riot of talk and laughter—a swirl of figures—a medley of shouts and women’s screams, drowning out the squeak of the musicians’ violins and the thump of the tinny piano.
Jimmie Dale’s jaws locked hard together. There was a struggling, Furious mob at the lower end of the hall—but his eyes now never left the gunman two tables away. Klanner, in dazed amazement, had half risen from his seat, as though uncertain what to do. The screams, shouts, oaths and yells grew louder—came the roar of a revolver shot—another—pandemonium was reigning now. It seemed an hour, a great period of time since the first shout had rung through the hall—it had been but a matter of seconds. Jimmie Dale was crouched a little forward in his chair now, tense, motionless. What was holding Hoppy Meggs! This was Hoppy Meggs’ cue, wasn’t it?—those shots there, aimed at the floor, had only been to create the panic—there was to be another shot that—
The hall was in sudden darkness. With a spring, quick on the instant, Jimmie Dale was upon Klanner’s back, hurling the man to the floor. The tongue-flame of a revolver split the black over his head; there was the deafening roar of a revolver shot almost in his ears that blotted out for an instant all other sounds—and then came the shouts and cries again in an access of terror and now the rush of feet—a blind stampede in the darkness for the exits. Another shot from the gunman, as though to make his work doubly sure, followed the first—but now some of the fear-stricken crowd had come between them, plunging, falling, tripping over tables and chairs, seeking the rear exit.
“Quick!” Jimmie Dale breathed in Klanner’s ear. He was half lifting, half dragging the man along. “Quick—get your feet, man!”
There was a surging mob around them now, pushing, fighting madly to reach the door; and, as Klanner regained his feet, they were both swept forward, and, lunging through the door, were precipitated out into the lane. And here, wary of a riot call that had probably already been rung in by the patrolman on the beat, the crowd was taking to its heels and dispersing in both directions along the lane.
“Quick!” said Jimmie Dale again—and, with his hand on Klanner’s arm, broke into a run.
Those running in the same direction turned off from the lane at the first cross street; but Jimmie Dale held to the lane, and it was three blocks away from Baldy Jack’s before he stopped.