"You act like a crazy man!" Wicks declared with a sudden change of manner. "I'll have you discharged—you are discharged! The case is out of your hands. You——"
For the third time a knock was sounded on the door.
"Come in!" called Garrison, keeping his eyes on Wicks, whose face had turned from the red of rage to the white of sudden fear. "Come in—don't wait!"
It was Pike and young Will Barnes.
"That's the man!" said the youth on entering, his eyes transfixed by
Wicks. "Look at him laugh!"
"I'd kill you all if I had a gun!" cried Wicks in an outburst of malignity. "I killed Hardy, yes! I said I'd get him, and I got him! It's all I lived for, but, by Heaven! you'll never take me to jail alive!"
He caught up a chair, ran to the window, and beat out the glass with a blow. Garrison ran to snatch him back, but Wicks swung the chair and it broke on Garrison's head and he went down abruptly in a heap.
There were two sharp cries. Wicks made one as he leaped to his death from the sill.
The other came in a woman's utterance.
It was Dorothy, at the open door.