Birdie Lee drew back a little on his knees, glancing quickly up at the other.
“What—what d’ye mean by that, Slimmy!” he exclaimed in a startled way.
“I’ll show you what I mean, and I’ll show you blamed quick if you don’t open that safe!” Slimmy Jack threatened hoarsely. “Blast you, you’re stalling on me—that’s what you’re doing! I’ve seen you work before. You could open that thing with your finger nails, if you wanted to! Now, open it!”
“But, I can’t!” protested Birdie Lee. “I wouldn’t hand you anything like that, Slimmy—you know that, Slimmy. I—”
“Open it! And open it—quick!” Slimmy Jack’s hand was wrenching at his side pocket.
“But, I tell you, I can’t, Slimmy!” cried Birdie Lee, almost piteously. “It’s queered me up there in the pen. I”—he was rising to his feet—“Slimmy—for God’s, sake—what are you doing—you—”
There was a flash, the roar of the report, a swaying form, a revolver clattering to the floor—and with a crash Slimmy Jack pitched forward and lay motionless.
Then silence.
It had come without warning, in the winking of an eye, and for a moment it seemed to Jimmie Dale that he could not grasp the full significance of what had happened—that Slimmy Jack, his sleeve catching on the hinge of the safe as he had finally succeeded in jerking his revolver from his pocket, had, a grim, ironical trick of fate, accidentally shot himself! Mechanically, automatically, Jimmie Dale’s hands went to his pockets and produced his own flashlight and revolver—but he did not move. His eyes now were on Birdie Lee, who, like a man dazed and terror-stricken, had lurched back against the safe, the flashlight that dangled in his hand sweeping queer, aimless patches of light about the floor.
Still silence—only the uproar from the dance hall that would have drowned out to those below the sound of the revolver shot. Then Birdie Lee staggered forward, and knelt beside the prostrate form on the floor. He stood up again presently, swaying unsteadily on his feet, turning his head wildly about, now this way, now that. And then his whisper, broken, hoarse, quavered through the room: