Leaping down across the footlights, Don Winslow, Red Pennington and a dozen of Hammond’s men lined up with ready guns. Yet in the face of that threat more than half the Scorpion assembly had drawn concealed pistols.
A single shot would touch off a battle to the death. None knew it better than Michael Splendor as he perched on the shoulders of a powerful deputy, full in the spotlight’s glare. He knew also that men and women, however desperate, can sometimes be bluffed.
“Every exit to this room is blocked by armed men!” he announced in a ringing voice. “Throw down your weapons and ye’ll take no harm. Fight and ye’ll get licked anyway. Which will ye choose?”
A low muttering began among the trapped councilmen of Scorpia. Above the babel of whispers a single voice rose clear.
“Cho-San escaped!” rang the defiant shout. “The secret corridors are NOT blocked. We will scatter—and catch these fools in their own trap!”
A roar of approval went up from the crowd. In three scrambling groups the assembly broke for the sides and rear of the auditorium, avoiding the platform. A few of the nearest kept their eyes and pistols trained on the line of riflemen, but they clearly wished to postpone the shooting.
To the mob’s angry surprise, this means of escape had been forestalled. When the paneled exit doors slid back, a squad of deputies barred each opening with clubbed guns. At the same time Splendor’s bellow rose above the tumult.
“On with your gas masks, boys!” he ordered. “We’ll have these wastrels chokin’ for breath in two minutes.”
Suiting action to words, the veteran pulled the ring of a tear gas grenade and flung it. Twice more he repeated the motion before bullets from the ranks of Scorpia drilled him and his human mount. With a groan the big deputy sank to his knees, spilling his wounded chief to the floor.
From the embattled exits more gas grenades were being hurled, but there the press of fighting bodies was too close for pistol work. The same sort of struggle was taking place where Don Winslow and his squad of fighters held back a rush for the stage exits.