The hammer fell with a sharp click. He opened his eyes. If it didn’t hurt any more than that he could do it with them open. Why not? In a frenzy to have it over with he pulled again and was gratified to find that the second 172 bullet was not a whit more painful than the first. Then he thought of the ugly spectacle he would present if he confined the mutilation to the abdominal region. People would shudder and say, “how horrible he looks!” So he considerately aimed the third one at his right eye.
Even as he pulled the trigger, and the hammer fell with the usual click, his vision centred on the black little hole in the end of the barrel. Breathlessly he waited for the bullet to emerge. Then, all of a sudden, he recalled that there had been no explosion. The fact had escaped him during the throes of a far from disagreeable death. He put his hand to his stomach. In a dumb sort of wonder he first examined his fingers, and, finding no gore, proceeded to a rather careful inspection of the weapon.
Then he leaned back and dizzily tried to remember when he had taken the cartridges out of the thing.
“Thank the Lord,” he said, quite devoutly. “I thought I was a goner, sure. Now, when did I take ’em out?”
The elevator shot past him, going upward. He paid no attention to it.
It all came back to him in a flash. He remembered 173 that he had never loaded it at all. A loaded pistol is a very dangerous thing to have about the house. The little box of cartridges that came with the weapon was safely locked away at the bottom of the trunk, wrapped in a thick suit of underwear for protection against concussion.
Even as he congratulated himself on his remarkable foresight the elevator, filled with excited men, rushed past him on the way down. He heard them saying that a dangerous lunatic was at large and that he ought to be––But he couldn’t hear the rest of it, the car being so far below him.
“By jingo!” he exclaimed, leaping to his feet in consternation. “They’ll get me now. What a blamed fool I was!”
Scared out of his wits, he dashed up the steps, three at a jump, and, before he knew it, ran plump into the midst of the women who were huddled at Nellie’s landing, waiting for the shots and the death yells from below. They scattered like sheep, too frightened to scream, and he plunged through the open door into the apartment.
“Where are you, Nellie?” he bawled. 174 “Hide me! Don’t let ’em get me. Nellie! Oh, Nellie!”