The young attorney had no thought of impending danger. He paid no attention to the vehicles passing in the street. Standing in the full light of the corner, he was watching for the approach of the man he expected.
It was a freak of chance that warned Morris Clarendon of the doom which threatened him; and like so many of Fate’s grim jokes, the warning was to come too late.
A gust of wind swept across the sidewalk, and carried a hat from a man’s head. Clarendon saw the hat roll into the street. It was captured by its owner, and the man leaped back to the sidewalk to escape an approaching car.
Clarendon saw this, and the movement of the car immediately held his attention. For the automobile was a touring car with sideflaps; it was swinging toward the curb in an eccentric fashion; and its whole appearance and action betrayed its purpose.
Morris Clarendon recognized it as a death car, and in one brief instant he realized that he was the object of its threat.
He looked for a place to dodge; but he was too late. The car was almost upon him, now.
He was standing twenty feet from the corner, against the wall of the building. There was no doorway near. Clarendon’s knees could not respond to his desire to rush for safety.
All was futile. The car was at the curb, swinging slowly onward, and beneath the flap of the rear seat the young district attorney saw the projecting muzzle of the machine gun — a blackened muzzle that looked like the mouthpiece of a telephone.
That muzzle meant death! Quick death, and sure death. There was no escaping it.
So, with grim determination, Morris Clarendon flattened his body against the wall, ready to receive the fatal bullets which would end his life.