“Please do as I say,” insisted Johnny. “I can take care of myself unless there’s a general row. In that case all my friends are better together.”
Without further protest I left him, and edged my way to the little group at the end of the bar. Randall nodded to me as I came up, and motioned to the barkeeper to set me out a glass, but said nothing. Ours was the only lot away from the gaming tables not talking. We sipped our drink and watched Johnny.
After surveying coolly the room, Johnny advanced to the farther of the gambling tables, and began to play. His back was toward the entrance. The game was roulette, and Johnny tossed down his bets methodically, studying with apparent absorption each shift of the wheel. To all appearance he was intent on the game, and nothing else; and he talked and laughed with his neighbours and the dealer as though his spirit were quite carefree.
For ten minutes we watched. Then a huge figure appeared in the blackness of the doorway, slipped through, and instantly to one side, so that his back was to the wall. Scar-face Charley had arrived.
He surveyed the place as we had done, almost instantly caught sight of Johnny, and immediately began to make his way across the room through the crowds of loungers. Johnny was laying a bet, bending over the table, joking with the impassive dealer, his back turned to the door, 286 totally oblivious of his enemy’s approach. I started forward, instantly realized the hopelessness of either getting quickly through that crowd or of making myself heard, and leaned back, clutching the rail with both hands. Johnny was hesitating, his hand hovering uncertainly above the marked squares of the layout, in doubt exactly where to bet. Scar-face Charley shouldered his way through the loungers and reached the clear space immediately behind his unconscious victim. He stopped for an instant, squared his shoulders, and took one step forward. Johnny dropped his chips on the felt layout, contemplated his choice an instant–and suddenly whirled on his heel in a lightning about-face.
Although momentarily startled by this unexpected evidence that Johnny was not so far off guard as he had seemed, the desperado’s hand dropped swiftly to the butt of his pistol. At the same instant Johnny’s arm snapped forward in the familiar motion of drawing from the sleeve. The motion started clean and smooth, but half through, caught, dragged, halted. I gasped aloud, but had time for no more than that; Scar-face Charley’s revolver was already on the leap. Then at last Johnny’s derringer appeared, apparently as the result of a desperate effort. Almost with the motion, it barked, and the big man whirled to the floor, his pistol, already at half raise, clattering away. The whole episode from the beginning occupied the space of two eye-winks. Probably no one but myself and Danny Randall could have caught the slight hitch in Johnny’s draw; and indeed I doubt if anybody saw whence he had snatched the derringer.
287A complete silence fell. It could have lasted only an instant; but Johnny seized that instant.
“Has this man any friends here?” he asked clearly.
His head was back, and his snapping black eyes seemed to see everywhere at once.
No one answered or stirred. Johnny held them for perhaps ten seconds, then deliberately turned back to the table.