There was just cause. Inside the door opening was a masked figure levelling down a double-barrelled shotgun upon them. Lacking the mask and the shotgun, and lacking, too, a certain rigid and purposeful pose which was most clearly defined in all its lines, the figure would have lacked all menace, indeed would have seemed to the casual eye a most impotent and grotesque figure. For it was but little better than five feet in stature and not overly broad. It wore garments too loose for it by many inches. The sleeve ends covered the small hands to the finger ends, and the trousers wrinkled, accordion fashion, to the tips of the absurdly small toes. An old slouch hat threatened to slip all the way down over the wearer's face. The mask was a flimsy thing of black cambric, but the eyeholes, strange to say, were neatly worked with buttonhole stitching. From beneath the hatbrim at the back a hank of longish hair escaped. On the floor, a yard or so before the apparition where it had been dropped, rested an ancient black handbag unlatched and agape.
I am not meaning to claim that at the first instant of looking the several astonished eyes of the gathering in King Highpockets' place comprehended all these details; it was the general effect that they got; and it was that shotgun which mainly made the difference in their point of view. What they did note most clearly—every man of them—was that the two hammers of the gun stood erect, ready to drop, and that a slim trigger finger played nervously inside the trigger guard, and that the twin muzzles, shifting and wavering like a pair, of round hard eyes gazing every way at once, seemed to fix a threatening stare upon all of them and upon each of them. If the heavy gun shook a bit in the grip of its holder that but added to the common peril. Anyone there would have taken his dying oath that the thing aimed for his shrinking vitals and none other's. “Hands up—up high! And keep 'em up!” The command, given in a high-pitched key, was practically unnecessary. Automatically, as it were, all arms there had risen to full stretch, so that the clump of their motionless bodies was fronded at the top with open palms and tremulous outstretched fingers. But the arms of old King Highpockets rose above all the rest and his fingers shook the shakiest.
“If anybody moves an inch I'll shoot.”
“That don't go for me—I ain't aimin' to move,” murmured Josh Herron. Josh was scared all right, but he chuckled as he said it. “Now—boy— you!”
The gun barrels dipped to the right an instant, including the detached form of Babe Givens in their swing.
“Yas, suh, boss, yas!”
“You put all that money in this grip sack here at my feet.”
“W-w-which money, boss?”
“All the money that's there on that table yonder—every cent of it.”
The little darky feared the man who paid him his wages, but there were things in this world he feared more—masked faces and shotguns, for example. His knees smote together and his teeth became as castanets which played in his jaws, as with rolling eyes and a skin like wet ashes he moved shudderingly to obey. Between the table and the valise he made two round trips, carrying the first time silver, the second time paper, and then, his task accomplished, he collapsed against the wall because his legs would no longer hold him up. For there was water in his knee joints and his feet were very cold.