Laddam looked around curiously. He had never been there before. Lined up on all sides of him were 202 the waiters, bouncers, men of prey, their faces ghastly, and three or four of them sick. The silent throng around the walls stared at the scene from the partial shadows; no one seemed even to be breathing. Then Palura made a horrible gulping sound, and writhed as he gave up his last gasp of life.
“Now then!” Laddam looked about him, and his voice was the low roar of a man at his kill. “You men pick them up, pack them outside there, and up to headquarters. March!”
As one man, the men who had been Palura’s marched. They gathered up the remains of Palura and the men with broken skulls, and carried them out into the street. The crowd followed, men and women both. But outside, the hundreds scurried away in all directions, men afraid and women choking with horror. Terabon’s friend the cotton broker fled with the rest, Carline disappeared, but Terabon went to headquarters, writing in his pocket notebook the details of this rare and wonderful tragedy.
Policeman Laddam had single-handed charged and captured the last citadel of Mendova vice, and the other policemen, when they looked at him, wore expressions of wonder and bewilderment. They knew the Committee of 100 would make him their next chief and a man under whom it would be a credit to be a cop.
Terabon, just before dawn, returned toward Mousa Slough. As he did so, from a dull corner a whisper greeted him:
“Say, Terabon, is it straight, Palura killed up?”
“Sure thing!”
“Then Mendova’s sure gone to hell!” Hilt Despard the river pirate cried. “Say, Terabon, there’s a lady down by the slough wants to get to talk to you.” 203
“Who––?”
“She just dropped in to-night, Nelia Crele! She’s into her boat down at the head of the sandbar, facing the switch willows. There’s a little gasolene sternwheeler next below her boat.”