The girl's eyes widened. "They know where he is?"
"Exactly."
"But he's such a gentle old man. Surely they wouldn't murder him."
Jaro said nothing. He sat facing the entrance. From time to time he flicked his eyes to the girl's face but for the most part, he watched the doorway like a cat at a mouse hole. For some minutes past he had been unobtrusively studying a plump, bald-headed man who had entered and was loitering about the door. The plump man's hand disappeared inside the breast of his gray coat. When it reappeared there was the glint of metal in his fist.
Without a word of warning, Jaro seized the edge of the table, upended it with a crash of glass. In the same movement, he slipped to the floor, using the table as a shield. Joan was left sitting in her chair, a foolish expression on her face.
"For heaven's sake," she hissed, "get up! Everybody's staring at us."
Jaro shifted the slug gun to his left hand, grabbed the girl by one shapely ankle, yanked her to the floor.
"Oof!" she gulped as she lit with a solid smack. Her hat slid to the back of her head.
"Stay down!" said Jaro impassively.
The plump man in the gray suit was circling the table warily. Jaro took a pot shot at him over the top of the table. The plump man spun around as if jerked by an unseen hand. The occupants of the other tables simultaneously dived for the door which was at least ten feet too narrow to accommodate them all. The plump man was sitting on the floor, his back to the wall, a surprised expression on his face. His poisoned dart gun lay a dozen feet away.