But it was a different sight that met Shagarach's eye when the chandeliers blazed again. The roletto table had disappeared, probably carried downstairs by a trapdoor at Reddy's touch of the button. This was the use for which the vacant fourth story was reserved. All around among the smaller tables the gamblers stood like lambs, trembling and pale in the grip of the law. In the middle of the floor lay Reddy, the blood bubbling from a pea-sized hole that divided his left eyebrow and gathering in a thick pool on the carpet. McCausland's bullet had flown true to its target.
Only one of the gamblers was missing.
"He must have climbed out of the window," said Shagarach, sotto voce.
CHAPTER XIX.
LEX REX.
Stupefaction is a weak word to express the feelings of Saul Aronson when a messenger awakened him at 1 o'clock Thursday morning with a request from Shagarach that he would come to police station No. 5 at once. The attorney's assistant was never a sluggard, but the celerity with which on this occasion he scrambled into his street clothes would have done credit to a lightning-change artist.
The police captain received him courteously, explaining, as he conducted him to Shagarach's cell, his hesitancy about discharging the lawyer without permission from McCausland, who had maliciously disappeared. Both he and Shagarach were agreed that the most judicious course was to accept a temporary release on bail, and later to secure a quashing of the charge by an explanation to the district attorney. So Aronson set out again to secure bail, and at 4 o'clock had the joy of seeing his master pass down the station steps with his bondsman.
It was fortunate that the affair turned out so well, for the very next day had been set down for the hearing in the Probate court on the settlement of Benjamin Arnold's estate.
Hodgkins Hodgkins, Esq., flanked by the other two members of the firm of Hodgkins, Hodgkins & Hodgkins—namely, his brother and his nephew—was already on his feet to address the court when Shagarach, as representative of Robert Floyd's interest, arrived and pushed to the front. Except for the fact that he was Prof. Arnold's oldest acquaintance in the city, it was hard to understand the selection of Hodgkins for the responsible position of executor over a property of $10,000,000.