The intruder did not at once reply. Luke saw the revolver advance toward him in the light. It was followed by a thick, short arm, and the arm was followed by a short thick man. He wore a velours Alpine hat. It was pushed to one side of his head, and Luke saw that the hair below it was red.
That was almost the last thing he did see before the shot was fired. Luke made a flying leap at the red-headed man and tried to knock the revolver into the air. As he did so, the revolver spat at him.
A loud report. A darting arrow of flame.
Luke lay on the office floor. The red-headed man's skilled fingers ran deftly through his clothes. Then the killer raised the shattered window and dropped into the street.
§5. One of Breil's strike-breakers, making his round of the factory, heard the shot and came running toward the noise. He ran to the upper office and burst into the room.
A curling cloud of lazy smoke was weaving graceful figures in the shaft of light from the street-lamp outside; it embraced an overturned chair, and circled the top of the center table. Above it the strike-breaker saw the upper half of a disheveled figure, the figure of Luke Huber, leaning out of the window and shaking its fist at all the city round about. In a high, cracked voice, Luke was yelling curses at the world.
"God damn your system and your politics!" yelled he. "God damn your law and your government! God damn your god!"
He turned toward the noise behind him and showed himself with matted hair and staring eyes, with a cut in his forehead and a white face that had brown stains about its lolling mouth, with a slowly broadening patch of blood in his torn shirt.
"Mr. Huber!" gasped the strike-breaker. He ran forward.
As he did so, Huber's voice howled into shattered song: