"You son-of-a——!"
Bill's hand clutched at Kars' muscular arm.
"That's the kid! Quick! Come on!"
They started for the door of the box. But, even as the doctor gripped and turned the handle, the sequel to such an epithet in a place like Leaping Horse came. Two shots rang out. Then two more followed on the instant.
In a moment every light in the place was put out and pandemonium reigned.
CHAPTER XXI
DR. BILL INVESTIGATES
All that had been feared by the two men in the box had come to pass. It had come with a swiftness, a sureness incomparable. It had come with a mercilessness which those who knew him regarded as only to be expected in a man of Pap Shaunbaum's record.
Accustomed to an atmosphere very little removed from the lawless, the panic and pandemonium that reigned in the dark was hardly to have been expected on the part of the frequenters of the Elysian Fields. But it was the sudden blacking out of the scene which had wrought on the nerves. It was the doubt, the fear of where the next shots might come, which sent men and women, shrieking and shouting, stampeding for the doors which led to the hotel.