He guessed that the picture was intended to terrify, to impress upon him the futility of resistance, yet while he had his revolver the success of such an attack was remote.
"Stay where you are," he said, puzzled, trying to understand. "Come any closer and I'll shoot."
The yellow mouths grinned. Then, when it was too late, Garth understood the trick. A rush of colder air on his back informed him that the heavy door was open. He stood between two fires. In fact, before he could turn, his wrists were grasped. Two leering faces were close to him, but as the revolver was wrenched from his hand, he pulled the trigger twice. With the great door open those explosions might penetrate beyond the house wall, might carry even to the inspector's men on the sidewalk.
They had at least aroused in the thick brown twilight of the house a restless, incoherent stirring. Voices muttered. Steps pattered here and there. A muffled bell commenced to complain. Through the curtains from the inner room stepped a man—a white man with cruelly intelligent features. Garth realized that he probably faced the head of this organization which for so long had outwitted the police.
Garth laughed with an effort at bravado.
"That was a signal," he said. "Block's surrounded. They'll be in here before you can light a joss stick. Call these things off, or you're as good as in the chair."
Upstairs the stirrings increased. Someone shrieked.
Nora appeared at the man's elbow. Her face was twisted with an abandoned terror.
"Men in the yard!" she gasped.
Garth guessed that it was a part of her scheme to turn the hunt from him, to give him that one moment he needed. And it worked. He felt his hands released. The Chinamen crouched along the wall, as if trying to conceal themselves, whining pitifully.