"Never fire first!" the voice of training whispered as the sergeant hurled himself toward his foe.
Karmack's pistol barked. A bullet whizzed past the policeman's ear, a narrow miss but as good as a mile.
Now came the King's turn. Upward to his shoulder swung the gun with which Seymour had won many a target match. In a second, it seemed, Karmack must bite the snow.
But the gun never was fired. Into direct range between the two men, Moira O'Malley had flung herself, a tall, fur-clad figure. The human target of the scoundrel momentarily was blanketed. What mattered it that the school girl of Ottawa was pointing an automatic as steadily as she had held it upon him in the trade room that time back in Armistice. Sergeant Scarlet could not fire upon an innocent woman.
He barely saw a whiff of smoke leave the mouth of her pistol, scarcely heard what seemed a double report, when a burning sensation along one temple and across the side of his scalp threw him backward to a fall on his side.
And as he toppled into the snow, to lie inert and helpless, it seemed to him that the glorious girl lunged forward to the same cold couch that was his.
Was it possible that, by some involuntary pressure on the trigger, he had fired at Moira O'Malley? In the paralytic clutch of the moment he could not answer the heart-burning question.
Consciousness must have fled Seymour's mind for just a moment. With its return, he realized that Karmack was shouting excited orders to Koplock, the interpreter. Haunted by that last glimpse of Moira tumbling forward into the snow, the sergeant tried to raise himself for another look over the tragic stage. Only his brain seemed awake; body muscles refused to respond to its demand. He could only lie there, staring into the dingy, low-hung sky, and listen.
"Very bad affair this one, boss," he heard.
The voice was Koplock's and the conversational tone, which carried through the frosty stillness plainly, indicated that the interpreter and the factor stood together.